From Relevant Capabilities to Relevant Indicators: Defining an Indicator System for Children’s Well-Being in Spain

Abstract

In the last two decades, studies dealing with the measurement of children’s well-being have proliferated. These studies develop mainly from the need to address the topic from a multidimensional perspective, capable of integrating approaches into a more comprehensive view of reality. In this regard, key issues have been tackled and discussions are still open, such as those on the inclusion of boys and girls as active agents in the definition of their needs, or on the consideration of aspects that affect both present and future needs as part of well-being. The capability theory sets a very interesting theoretical framework within this context. This work will, first of all, try to approach the topic of children’s well-being from such perspective in conjunction with the Life Sustainability proposition. There is, however, no translation of these theoretical contributions to the development of indicators, even though the actual need for them is well acknowledged, given the political and social-action implications of bringing this progress to the realm of the tangible. There are two main reasons for this. First, the scarcity of data about children that could allow the empirical development of valid and reliable measurements in this field. Second, the methodological difficulty of appropriately defining this kind of factors, which are very often linked to subjective and/or intangible aspects, for quantification purposes. Keeping all this in mind, the second part of this work aims at making some progress in this direction and proposes a system of indicators to support what is first analyzed from a conceptual point of view.