Children’s Well-Being: Exploring the Current State-Of-The-Art in Conceptualization and Measurement

Abstract

In the last decade, there was substantial growth in children’s well-being investigations, which made considerable progress in understanding the correlates, antecedents, and consequences of children’s well-being. In order to gain more insight into the current state-of-the-art in the field of children’s well-being, this paper aims to present an integrated overview of the recent scientific progress in this area of research. First, we elaborate on the main theoretical conceptualizations of children’s well-being, including hedonic and eudemonic approaches. Second, we explore the challenges of assessing children’s well-being, with a focus on different measurement approaches as well as the developmental aspects of assessing children’s well-being. Finally, we present patterns of findings on the associations between children’s well-being and basic demographic variables, as well as conclusions and implications for future research.