1 Introduction

The Capability Approach (Sen 1993, 2004) is a very useful theoretical framework with a multidimensional perspective. It states that the well-being agenda cannot be reduced to the material aspects of life, because it is actually a multidimensional and, to a great extent, immaterial agenda. It does not deny the importance of material well-being, but rather underlines the need to combine poverty and material deprivation indicators with other type of indicators. Within this framework, the Life Sustainability proposition, initially developed in the field of feminist economics in Spain and Latin America, specifically underscores the importance of decentering the markets as a key to understanding the development of capabilities, while bringing to light the central role of care work performed in the home and existing gender inequalities.

Reflecting on the very concept of childhood and on its reality is a requirement prior to any analysis on children’s well-being. Any social problem is the result of competing and constantly changing values, interpretations and interests (Bustelo and Lombardo 2007), and the way in which the problem is defined and delimited reflects a strategical choice of knowing and acting in which the historical, institutional and cultural contexts surely have an influence. Therefore, as pointed out by Casas (2006), “children, in the sense of a ‘population group within a territory or society’, are not only an observable and objectifiable reality. They are also (and maybe even […] ‘above all’) a reality represented by each of us both individually and collectively”. According to this author, these two realities do not necessarily coincide. Thus, it is possible to distinguish between “the life of children”, their everyday reality of living and being active being a specific age in a specific place, and the “image of children”, i.e. the social representation of children that a particular age group, social group or individual has and that may have important consequences for “real” children (James et al. 1998 in Comim et al. 2011).

It is necessary to remember that attitudes and ideas about children, as well as the very concept of what children are, have changed throughout history (Casas 2006a; Haukanes and Thelen 2010), and that, to a great extent, this is due to the fact that research on children is one of the tools that adults use to promote a “good society” (how to model children to transform them into useful adults within a specific model of society). In this regard, all knowledge produced in a specific moment is interwoven with power relations. It is possible to ask oneself what role those power relations have in defining what is generally considered as a “good society” in a particular period (Mason and Watson 2014), and how this is related with a “good upbringing”, a concept that has always been connected to the definition of “motherhood”, especially of “good motherhood” (Bock and Thane 1996), and, more recently, of “fatherhood” as well. When it comes to studying these issues, the application of a structural perspective is fundamental. This perspective, “one that must be in generational terms”, considers childhood as a structural form and, therefore, acknowledges its universal presence and its historical and cultural variability (Qvortrup 2014; 2009). Haukanes and Thelen, following the pioneering studies of Philippe Ariès (1960 in Haukanes and Thelen 2010), remind that the modernization of childhood was driven by two key parallel processes: institutionalization, which confined the life of children to places and spaces away from the adult world (for instance, compulsory schooling), and the privatization of family life, which also implied the association of women to the domestic sphere and to unpaid work. These authors highlight, however, that these processes are not homogeneous and universal, since they present significant regional, class and cultural differences (Ansell 2005 in Haukanes and Thelen 2010; Nielsen and Thorne 2014).

Together with this idea of childhood as a social construction, Woodhead (2009b in Mason and Watson 2014) emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the status and rights of children, and of understanding that intergenerationality and adult-children relations are significant. In line with this, in the last decades a series of approaches have been developed that understand children and adolescents as groups in their own right, with their own worries and priorities, members of society within a wider social justice agenda (Lister 2006), and not simply “adults in the making” (McLellan and Steward 2014, 5), “not-yets” (Fegter and Richter 2014) or “becomings” (Uprichard 2008). Lister, in her analysis on the United Kingdom, states that the more future-oriented and, to a certain extent, instrumentalist “social investment approach” (Esping-Andersen 2007) is insufficient, because it focuses on the construction of children as “becomings” rather than as “beings” and promotes a model of citizenship based on paid work, somehow excluding those groups of children that “are not such a good investment” and that overload the people in charge of them, mostly low-income mothers (Lister 2006, 315). Both visions, that of children “at-present” and that of children as “not-yets”, as well as the possible connection between them, have ethical and political implications for the definition and promotion of children’s well-being. In brief, the fact that “children are both on their way to a future as adults, involving the rights to develop their abilities, and they are citizens of the present, with the rights to immediate well-being as children” needs to be remarked (Ben-Arieh et al. 2014, 5). As Uprichard accurately suggests, “children and childhood are always and necessarily ‘beings and becoming’”, and, therefore, it is appropriate to consider these discourses together, and not necessarily as conflicting ones (Uprichard 2008, 303).

Yet, there is no translation of these theoretical reflections and contributions to the development of indicators, even though the need for indicators is well acknowledged, given the political and social-action implications of bringing such advances to the realm of the tangible. In order to move forward in both directions, this work discusses, first of all, some of the characteristics of the capability and the sustainability of life approaches, and what applying both of them to the sphere of children may represent. Next, it presents various propositions that aim to further the identification of capabilities relevant to children’s well-being. Its fourth section ponders the importance of measurement from both a methodological and a conceptual point of view, whereas the fifth section specifies a non-definitive list of indicators adapted to the Spanish context. These indicators aim at reflecting this new conceptual framework and at making it tangible as a proposition for the implementation of public policies regarding children’s well-being in Spain. Finally, a series of conclusions and final remarks summarize that which has been exposed.

2 Children from a Capabilities and Life Sustainability Approach

The evolution from an approach based on an economistic concept of well-being to another one more focused on social aspects as a way to overcome the purely economic perspective is the main axis of many social research works in the last decades. Approaches such as those of the Degrowth Movement or the Buen Vivir Movement (D’Alisa et al. 2014; Latouche 2008; Ramírez 2012) have irrupted in the last years. However, if there is a solid line of work in this direction, it is the capabilities approach, which was originally defined in Amartya Sen’s works (1985) and later elaborated, with greater attention paid to women’s well-being, by Martha Nussbaum (1995; 2001) and Ingrid Robeyns (2003; 2005). Its application to children’s well-being has been fruitfully gaining presence in the last years, so that, nowadays, it can be considered one of the clearest “conceptual framework[s] for understanding children’s well-being” (Comim et al. 2011, 3). This is evidenced by the publication of specialized volumes and monographs on the topic (Ben-Arieh et al. 2014; Biggeri et al. 2011; Qvortrup et al. 2009), as well as of various special issues in journals such as Ethical Perspective or the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.

The capability approach is based on what people are capable of being and doing (Sen 1993). It is one of the most potent approaches confronting the traditional economistic concept of well-being, because it overcomes Bentham and Mill’s utilitarian vision, which conceived the social well-being function as a cardinal sum of individual utilities. It consequently expands the concept of well-being from a goods-and-services basket (what people have or own) to a set of capabilities and functionings. Well-being is thus “related not only to the right to use one’s resources in accordance with one’s own preferences but also to the capacity to transform resources into valuable activities” (Ben Arieh et al. 2014). Thus, people with the same functionings can enjoy different levels of well-being depending on their set of choices (Rodríguez-Modroño et al. 2013, 195). In brief, this approach suggests a complex concept of well-being, which is bound to its time and geographical contexts and to a multidimensional frame encompassing its cultural, social and economic dimensions (Krishnakumar 2007). It, therefore, unites different theoretical perspectives on the social structure and the individual, and is both present- and future-oriented. For this reason, it is a particularly useful perspective to address children’s well-being and development, understood as the permanent expansion of their capabilities and their autonomy and self-determination in the present (Fegter and Richter 2014).

In regard to childhood, this perspective is the main line of study, given that children are a specific group in which certain aspects that were traditionally considered as secondary become especially relevant.

For its part, the Life Sustainability approach sets the comprehension and promotion of children’s well-being against a wider gender equality and social justice framework. Life Sustainability is understood as:

“A historical process of social reproduction or provisioning; a complex, dynamic and multidimensional process to satisfy the needs of individual identities and social relations in constant adaptation; a process that must be continually reconstructed and that requires material resources, but also contexts and relations of care and affection, which are, to a great extent, provided through unpaid work performed in households.” (Carrasco 2014, 44).

This concept bursts in also as an approach challenging the economistic concept of well-being and positioning life (and not the markets) in the center of the picture. It arises from the need to displace the markets and what is “monetarized” as the core element of well-being, claiming care and interdependence (Carrasco 2001, 2014; Pérez-Orozco 2006a) against the unrealistic and impossible ideal of independence as a goal. All people are vulnerable and interdependent and, as a result of it, they all need physical and emotional care throughout their lives and not only at the end or at specific moments (Rodríguez-Modroño and Agenjo 2016). In spite of this, care work has historically been depreciated for the mere fact of being assigned to women. Only in the last decades, it has been claimed as “work” and regarded as essential to guarantee well-being. To a great extent, this has been possible thanks to the work of important feminist economists (Nelson 1995; Picchio 1992, 2001; Power 2004), who developed the reproductive and human life care approaches.Footnote 1 In addition and in consonance with the capability approach, it incorporates a demand for decent and satisfactory living conditions and, at the same time, combines and presents the economic, social and ecological dimensions as directly and necessarily interconnected, proving that it is impossible to define one without mentioning the others (Bosch et al. 2005; Carrasco 2014; Herrero 2013). This has a series of political implications, including the need to guarantee the consistency of public policies. In parallel, taking into account the centrality of care for well-being brings the issues of time, gender inequalities in time use (Eurostat 2004; Gálvez-Muñoz et al. 2011) and time poverty (Wajcman 2015; Hirway 2015; Antonopoulos et al. 2012) to the fore of the analysis. Likewise, it allows addressing in depth the possibly contradictory or opposing interests between children’s and their parents’ well-being, especially that of the mothers as women and as individuals. Finally, by stressing the idea of interdependence, it contributes to give visibility to the fact that everyone (both adults and children) is interdependent and has different abilities during their lives.

In brief, the capability approach together with the Life Sustainability approach support the multidimensionality of the concept of children’s well-being used as well in other research fields. In addition, the Life Sustainability approach refers specifically to the actual possibility that society could live and develop without risking the life of future generations, i.e. that life could continue not only in human and economic terms, but also in social and ecological terms. Together, the capability and sustainability of life approaches enable analyzing the possibilities for the persistence of society, always considering the quality of life of the whole population (women and men, girls and boys, both now and in the future) as something directly related to the level of equality and justice and to the exercise of individual capabilities in harmony with the development of society.

3 Children and Well-Being: Identifying Relevant Capabilities

Acknowledging that children have specific needs throughout their lives entails an important scientific challenge: that of recognizing children as social actors with agency and autonomy (always in accordance with their age and maturity) and, therefore, able to express different points of view and priorities (Biggeri and Karkara 2014), however filtered by the socialization process, always essential when it comes to explain gender inequalities. Hence, the well-being agenda cannot be reduced simply to the material aspects of life, although it is true that material deprivation, particularly during childhood, is an important indicator of well-being and causes hardships in many other spheres. Certain “material” capabilities, like being properly fed or living in a healthy environment, once they are operationalized into specific functionings through the filter of the so-called conversion factors (the particular characteristics of the child, family, community, public policies, etc.), strongly condition the development of other capabilities, such as education or participation, which, in turn, may influence the former according to an evolving capacities scheme (Ballet et al. 2011, 24; Biggeri and Karkara 2014, 34).

In keeping with this, Biggeri highlights a series of elements that need to be taken into consideration when applying this approach to children (2004, Biggeri et al. 2006). First of all, the idea of the intergenerational transfer of capabilities, according to which parents and teachers have an important influence on the conversion factors that transform capabilities into functionings. Second, the idea that age and the life cycle are basic for the definition of those capabilities that are relevant during childhood and at every moment in life. Particularly when dealing with childhood, it is important to speak of evolving capacities and of capabilities that foster the development of other capabilities (Comim et al. 2011; Gálvez-Muñoz et al. 2013; Rodríguez-Modroño et al. 2013). It is also essential to acknowledge the role of children in the construction of future conversion factors, for instance, as suggested by the Life Sustainability approach, whether they will assume or not, and how, their social responsibility in care work. Consequently, it should be underlined that children may, at the same time, be the center of the intergenerational transfer of capabilities and a vehicle for social change and transformation (Biggeri et al. 2006) or the reproduction of the present conditions.

The incorporation of the concept of sustainability of life to the analysis of children’s well-being, by emphasizing the idea of social and ecological interdependence, favors the deconstruction and recombination of dualistic discourses, such as those that differentiate children as “beings” from children as “becomings”, while always taking into account the survival possibilities of future generations. In addition, it contributes to confirm that children are not a homogeneous group and to adopt a multidimensional concept of gender (Nielsen et al. 2014), as well as to consider children’s well-being from a life cycle perspective. In particular, this perspective helps reveal the differences in children’s capacities and well-being, and claims the need to include gender analysis when it comes to measuring those differences and analyzing their causes (Addabbo et al. 2014). From a methodological point of view, this approach requires, first of all, acknowledging women’s invisibility and, in this particular case, that of girls as opposed to boys, given that very often children studies have androcentric and sexist biases (Leyra and Barcenas 2014). Various studies show that the subjective well-being of girls, at least in certain realms of life, seems to be lower than that of boys (McLellan and Steward 2014; Montserrat et al. 2015), and that gender inequalities are observed when comparing girls’ and boys’ capabilities (Addabbo et al. 2014; Gálvez-Muñoz et al. 2013; Rodríguez-Modroño et al. 2013). Awareness of gender differences facilitates a deeper analysis of generational differences (Fegter and Richter 2014, 741).

Starting from the idea that age and maturity are essential to define and operationalize capabilities, it is reasonable to think that a list of capabilities relevant for children’s well-being will be different from a list for adults in the same society. In structural terms, we could say that, although all generational units are exposed to the same cultural, technological or economic parameters, they don’t experience or deal with these parameters in the same way (Qvortrup 2014; 2009). In addition, it is increasingly acknowledged that the way research on adults is performed cannot be automatically and uncritically applied to research on children and that children themselves must directly express which issues affect their well-being (McLellan and Steward 2014 5). However, Mason and Watson have explained how mainstream developmental psychology and children-oriented sociology and anthropology have, until very recently (although not without internal and external debates), supported that children are unable to speak in their own interest and that their worries and knowledge are not valid as research data unless reported and interpreted by adult researchers. The capability approach has not remained outside these debates and, in this respect, despite having enabled some very important advances, should deepen the discussion about children’s autonomy, agency and self-determination (Fegter and Richter 2014).Footnote 2 These perspectives have been incorporated, at least on their programs, by organizations such as UNICEF, which in their research works acknowledge that “the reality of children is very different from that of adults and is based on the children’s views as subjects of law with their own worries, needs and opinions” (González-Gago and Olcoz 2015, 8). This is also specified in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

What kind of research works are being developed on the sphere of children and their capabilities? Fegter and Richter (2014) affirm that they can be basically divided into two groups: those studies aiming at identifying the capabilities and functionings that are relevant for children; and those that analyze the present state of children’s well-being and analyze the various factors that affect it. When it comes to applying the capability approach to the conceptualization, measurement and evaluation of well-being, the basic theoretical and methodological discussion is, in fact, about whether establishing a specific and definitive list of basic capabilities that should become operative (as, for instance, the one proposed by Nussbaum 2001) is required or desirable, or whether, on the contrary, only contextualized and non-definitive lists, like those elaborated by Robeyns (2003) for gender equality or by Biggeri for children (Biggeri et al. 2006), can actually be drawn up. According to the supporters of this second option, if the lines set by Sen are to be respected, a definitive list of capabilities cannot be ratified. Nevertheless, it is possible to select a series of capabilities as specific theoretical or empirical objectives. As a matter of fact, in reviewing the literature it can be observed that the capabilities proposed to analyze children’s well-being vary depending on the context and the object of the research (Ben-Arieh 2008; Addabbo et al. 2004; Di Tommaso 2003; Biggeri et al. 2006; Anich et al. 2011; Di Tommaso 2007; Gálvez-Muñoz et al. 2013; Addabbo et al. 2014).

In keeping with the objective initially set out, the starting point of this work is the list elaborated by Biggeri et al. (2006) on the basis of the methodological propositions made by Robeyns (2003). The purpose is to adapt this list to the Spanish “post-crisis” contextFootnote 3 and to review it from the sustainability of life perspective. This decision has various implications. First, the need to underline the importance of the capability to “care” as separate from the capability to “love”, with the purpose of emphasizing that care is not only a question of love but, most of all, an essential element for social reproduction and progress in gender equality, and, consequently, a social responsibility, as proved by works on the care crisis (Ben-Arieh 2008; Pérez-Orozco 2006a, b). Then, considering the relevance bestowed on the environmental aspects by this approach, the need to divide the “shelter and environment” capability (being able to be sheltered and to live in a safe and pleasant environment, as suggested by Biggeri) in two. Thus, on the one side, the “environment” capability gains relevance and weight. And on the other, given the dramatic proliferation of evictions due to the recession in both Spain and Andalusia, the “shelter” capability is integrated into the more general “economic and material well-being” category. In addition, because of the centrality of time for the sustainability of life approach, the “time autonomy” capability suggested by Biggeri is expanded to “autonomy over one’s own life”. Hence, the capabilities in the list are finally twelve:

  1. 1)

    Physical and mental life and health: being healthy and having a normal lifespan.

  2. 2)

    Affectivity, emotions and love: being able to manifest and express emotions, as well as to give and take love and affection.

  3. 3)

    Good treatment and security: being able to enjoy a life free of violence in its different spheres.

  4. 4)

    Interpersonal relations: being able to enjoy belonging to different social networks (family, friends, pair groups, school community, etc.)

  5. 5)

    Participation and decision-making: being able to receive objective information, have a voice, have influence and make decisions regarding the public life of one’s community and environment.

  6. 6)

    Formal and informal education: being able to learn and receive good-quality and prejudice-free formal and informal education (access to information, critical analysis, sport training, music and arts education, etc.).

  7. 7)

    Economic and material well-being: being able to live a life free of economic and non-economic exploitation (including work, dwelling, etc.).

  8. 8)

    Co-responsibility and care work: being able to take care and be taken care of, and to share care work on an equal basis in terms of gender and without losing one’s autonomy.

  9. 9)

    Leisure activities, playing and imagination: being able to enjoy one’s free and leisure time.

  10. 10)

    Respect, diversity and identity: being respected and treated with dignity, being able to develop one’s own identity and to respect that of others.

  11. 11)

    Autonomy over one’s own life: being able to enjoy one’s own time, move autonomously and develop one’s own initiative and projects.

  12. 12)

    Environment: being able to enjoy a pollution-free (urban and rural) environment designed and built to allow the development of the rest of one’s capabilities.

4 Why is Measurement Necessary?

Policy implementation in the sphere of children’s well-being requires transforming all these concepts into tangible indicators, capable of synthesizing complex information into objective, specific and reality-based data that are useful for the design of appropriate measures to improve children’s well-being both at a local and an international level.

To move from a theoretical framework to the operationalization of capabilities is doubtlessly not an easy task, because as long as abstract concepts are used, concepts that are subject to valuation and on which there is no international consensus, the only possibility is to try to make contributions that are useful for the discussion and the progress towards a common and solid framework. In this sense, it is interesting to point out the existence of previous works that have attempted to address this same issue by implementing different methodologies of analysis (Addabbo and Marciano 2007; Addabbo and Maccagnan 2011; Hamid 2009; Krishnakumar 2007; Krishnakumar and Ballon 2008; Kuklys 2005).

The use of indicators to measure children’s well-being has its origins in the State of the Child reports elaborated in the 1940s (Ben-Arieh 2008). Since then, it has greatly increased due to the need for policy-oriented measures, but also to the profound changes occurred in family structures that have made the researchers worry about the consequences of those changes for children’s well-being (Ben-Arieh and Wintersberger 1997; 2008; Casas 2000; Forssén and Ritakallio 2006; Lee 1997).

In addition, the transition to what has been named as “new social childhood studies” (Fegter and Richter 2014), which are founded on normative changes and theoretical and methodological advances (Ben-Arieh 2008), has represented a final impulse.

Undertaking this line of work means giving an answer to two kinds of questions: methodological ones, which are greatly conditioning the progress made by research on this field, and conceptual ones. This section delves into both of these questions with the purpose of defining a framework that will permit the development of a system of indicators in the following section.

4.1 Conceptual Justification

With regard to the conceptual justification, works that have reviewed the existing literature on the measurement of children’s well-being (Ben-Arieh 2008; Amerijckx and Humblet 2014) have shown that, in the last years, progress has been made in this field around four lines of work (Ben Arieh et al. 2001; Ben-Arieh 2005; 2008, 1) the transition from survival indicators to well-being indicators; 2) the consideration of the positive aspects of children’s well-being, rather than of thresholds determined by the absence of negative (mainly material) aspects; 3) the inclusion of children’s present well-being indicators, thus transcending the traditional concept of children as “developing” subjects whose future well-being must be assessed, and incorporating measures that allow quantifying as well children’s present rights; 4) the incorporation of new domains into the analysis.

The first of these lines of work refers to the need to focus not only on the definition of minimum survival standards for children, like the first studies on indicators did, but also on widening the concept of well-being to include aspects related to the children’s quality of life and to the implications of this concept for their lives (Casas 2000; Huebner 1997; 2004).

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the document A World Fit for Children (UN 2002) introduced a new approach and a new ethical attitude that consider children as subjects of law and not just as mere recipients or beneficiaries of protective measures (Biggeri et al. 2006). The four principles reflected in the Convention –non-discrimination (art. 2); consideration of children as full citizens (art. 3); holistic view of children’s development (art. 6); children’s right to be heard (art. 12)– represented a fundamental step that has had important consequences on the development of children indicators. In particular, according to Ben-Arieh (2008, 5-6):

  1. 1)

    They put children on the well-being data collection agenda.

  2. 2)

    They called for the control of the Convention’s implementation.

  3. 3)

    They set out the demand for new indicators for interesting domains and subdomains that had not been measured before.Footnote 4

As reminded by Ben-Arieh et al. (2014, 5), the “child-centered focus is one that must increasingly be incorporated in studies of well-being”. However, “children’s own perspective and voices have often been forgotten”. For this reason, and insofar as analyzing children’s particular characteristics independently of their families is recommended (Kutzar 2015), direct observation of children as individuals with their own capabilities, circumstances, etc. becomes necessary.

This fact resonates very much with Sen’s theories (1997; 1999; 2004), because it implies the need to address diversity and the interconnection between children’s living conditions and daily contexts from a simultaneously individual and structural perspective, avoiding paternalistic positions that usurp children’s autonomy and central role. This does not mean that every study based on the capability approach must necessarily be participative, but that it must clearly justify the criteria for the selection of certain capabilities as relevant for a specific group (Fegter and Richter 2014).

In this sense, the experiences are many and diverse. Without any pretension of being exhaustive, but merely to offer a series of relevant examples, it is possible to highlight, among others, the works developed by Children’s Worlds, the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB),Footnote 5 a project that aims at collecting solid and representative data on children’s lives, daily activities, time use and perception and evaluation of their well-being, and which is materialized in various reports (see, for example, Rees et al. 2016); Young Life Studies, a project coordinated by MorrowFootnote 6 (see Crivello et al. 2013), which tackles the issue of poverty with new tools that transcend the traditional ones, and which could become an interesting starting point for future works that could adapt the proposed methodology to different contexts, such as, for instance, the developing nations; the Multi-National Project for Monitoring and Measuring Children’s WellbeingFootnote 7 coordinated by the Chapin Hall Centre at the University of Chicago, which brings together experts from 28 countries and aims at improving the ability to monitor and measure the status of children around the world; the UNICEF report on child poverty and child well-being in “rich” countries (UNICEF 2007), which compared data that are relevant to childhood well-being from 21 countries; the Index of Child Wellbeing in Europe, that compared 27 EU member states, plus Norway and Iceland (Bradshaw and Richardson 2009); Kidscreen-52, developed to facilitate cross-national comparisons, but unlike the measures above is based solely on children and young people’s self-reporting of their well-being (Ravens-Sieberer et al. 2005); the Child and Youth Wellbeing Index developed by the Foundation for Child Development, used to track trends over time in the quality of life and well-being of America’s children from birth to age 18 (Land 2007).

The second line of work, which is very much linked to the first, insists on the positive consideration that should be given to the concept of children’s well-being. The absence of risk factors or of negative behaviors during childhood does not guarantee a certain desirable quality of life or level of well-being (Moore et al. 2003; Moore et al. 2004). In connection to this, it is important to stress the appropriateness of proposing indicators that reflect this wider set of personal and social relations, etc.

Children grow in environments that have an influence on them and which are influenced by them. Bronfenbrenner and Morris (1998) applied the ecological systems theory of human development on children (Bronfenbrenner 1979). According to these authors, children’s development can be conceptualized into four concentric circles of influence. First of all, children interact with their families, but also with a close group of people like friends, neighbors, teachers, etc. These direct interactions represent what has been called the child’s microsystem (Ben-Arieh 2008, 6). The whole network of relations that contextualize children’s quality of life must be reflected on the indicators, thus incorporating the above-mentioned subjective elements. In addition to including new areas of work, it also means integrating dynamic indicators, because children’s relations with their environment are especially movable and changeable. In this respect, ever since the emergence of the sociology of childhood and the movement for children’s rights in the 1990s, and as the consensus about the impossibility of determining children’s objective well-being without asking them grew, the studies on children’s and adolescents’ subjective well-being have gained presence (Casas 2010; Fattore et al. 2007; Navarro et al. 2015).

In summary, the indicators should take into consideration: 1) children’s living conditions and objective measures of their well-being; 2) their perceptions, valuations and aspirations regarding their lives; and 3) the perceptions, valuations and aspirations of other social actors who are relevant for their lives (Ben-Arieh et al. 2014).

The third line of work insists on the already underlined consideration of children not as “becomings” but as actual “beings” and subjects of law, understanding childhood as much more than a transitional phase. Therefore, indicators require the analysis of data about not only what affects children as members of future generations but their present lives, because childhood is a stage with its own characteristics and particularities (Alanen 2001). A combination of these two types of indicators would be the ideal one (Ben Arieh et al. 2001), because it would both inject greater dynamism into the system of indicators and help assess the evolution from a series of specific inputs to a series of specific outputs. In other words, the indicators should be capable of measuring circumstances at different moments in time in relation to the same individual at different stages of development. In this regard, and from a technical point of view, the use of panel data would be very suitable.

The consideration of all these aspects, together with the need to define the concept to be measured according to the previous recommendations, leads to the incorporation of new domains and subdomains in the definition of the indicators. This is one of the main thesis on which authors like Bradshaw, Heymann, Main, Mekonen, Ben-Arieh, Mayn, Casas, Bourdillon, etc. are working and making progress.Footnote 8

4.2 Methodological Issues

One of the great challenges of measuring well-being in general, but even more in the case of children, is the definition of mechanisms that can provide access to suitable and good-quality data for the development of objective measures. Even if the Committee on the Rights of the Child identifies the collection and analysis of specific data on children’s living conditions as a necessary measure to make the rights defined on the Convention effective (González-Bueno et al. 2010, 6), there is still a long way to go in this direction (Lange and Mierendorff 2009, p. 83), particularly in countries like Spain. Paradoxically enough, political bodies and institutions are claiming for useful indicators for the development of human and children rights-friendly policies (UNICEF 2007). It thus seems necessary to give this final impulse to children statistics within an international, consensual and harmonized framework.

Unfortunately, research on this matter has been greatly determined by the availability of data, rather than by the need to build indicators that are consistent with the concept that needs to be measured (Sawyer et al. 2000; Bradshaw et al. 2006; Niclasen and Köhler 2009; Amerijckx and Humblet 2014). This is an enormous handicap when it comes to obtaining reliable and comparable results.

In spite of this, because it is a key issue, research on the measurement of children’s well-being has notably increased in the last two decades (Ben-Arieh 2005, 2008; Brown 2008; Ben-Arieh and Frønes 2009; Lamb and Land 2014). From a quantitative point of view, it has advanced along two main lines. On the one hand, aggregative mechanisms have been developed to build synthetic indicators that allow gathering summarized information and presenting numerical data in one single index that reveals the magnitude and significance of the phenomenon. This type of measurement has its own detractors, who affirm that the loss of information is too great and hinders the appropriate representation of that which is meant to be measured.

On the other hand, various lines of work have been proposed to facilitate the elaboration of systems of disaggregated indicators that encompass a wider set of domains. Among these domains, material well-being, education and health are the ones the most frequently used (O’Hare and Gutiérrez 2012). However, many critical voices have called attention to the need to advance and delve into other issues in order to incorporate new concepts of crucial importance for children’s well-being (OECD 2009; Ben-Arieh 2005, 2008). The purpose would be to transcend the traditional conception of “capacity to survive” and focus on aspects such as happiness and security. A multidimensional perspective is thus fostered, embracing fields like political science, psychology and sociology (Camfield et al. 2010) in addition to economics (UN 1989; Pollard and Lee 2003; Ben-Arieh 2005; Bradshaw and Richardson 2009; OECD 2009).

However, there is still no consensus regarding the key factors that should be taken into consideration so as to integrate all the aspects that best reflect children’s well-being. This is a crucial question that needs to be answered if a stable and solid theoretical framework is to be built. From this point of view, it is an element that demands special attention, more so if progress is supposed to be made in the development of synthetic indicators, which is the first step to be taken also along this analytical line.

In this regard, the need to consider the subjective aspects underlying the concept of well-being is especially relevant. These aspects haven’t usually been tackled by the literature on the topic, mostly focused on objective measurements. Yet, according to Watson and Mason, “the economic, sociocultural and political environments of the last 40 years or so have provided a context conducive to a reconstruction of the child and childhood in the knowledge production process”, and research methods that not only discuss children, but are elaborated with children or even developed by them have lately been promoted. As said before, insofar as children are considered social actors, knowing subjects and subjects of law and capabilities, they must have the possibility of expressing their own opinions and perceptions about their reality, which can sometimes differ from those of adults and which are especially useful to obtain information on their social relations and emotional well-being (Lohan and Murphy 2001; Ohannessian et al. 1995; Fegter and Richter 2014; González-Gago and Olcoz 2015).

In relation to this factor, it is necessary to be clear about the relevance of the context in which children live, because there are certain situations (migrations, for instance) in which aspects of a more emotional character become more important. As Nussbaum (2001) pointed out, attending to the social and institutional context in which children act is also essential in order to include social inequalities and injustice in the research process. Hence, there are authors that claim the need to redefine the concept of well-being in developing countries (Saith and Wazir 2010) or alternatively to the prevailing Western model (Amerijckx and Humblet 2014), as proposed by the Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir movement.

Finally, the third line of work is the one defended by authors who support the application of the capabilities theory to children by acknowledging them as active rather than passive agents, and by listening and incorporating their voices, always in consonance with their age and maturity (Biggeri et al. 2006; Biggeri and Santi 2012).

This is linked to the concept of “eudaimonic well-being”, which is beyond hedonic well-being and in which people recognize themselves and live according to their daimon or “true self” (Norton 1976 in McLellan and Steward 2014, 4). This concept associates the idea of a good life to fulfillment, self-determination, and meaning (Ben-Arieh et al. 2014). In other words, people who enjoy this kind of well-being have the capability to actualize and realize themselves, as well as to fully develop their potential. However, all too often, children are vulnerable to demands that are made on their behalf or about them, having too short a time to react or too small an influence on the discussion. Therefore, the defense of children’s participation must come hand in hand with methodological propositions and practical tools to develop it, such as public reasoning and scrutiny using mixed-method designs that combine surveys, case studies and focal groups to stimulate the children’s reflection process (Biggeri et al. 2006). In addition, information and communication technologies and, more specifically, mobile apps can open new fields of action along this line, given that the work is to be performed with a group of, in principle and with all the nuances, “digital natives” (Prensky 2001).

Acknowledging this need does not imply ignoring that “there is always a certain degree of ambiguity in the answers provided by children (as with any other class of respondents)” (Biggeri et al. 2011, 93; Fuck 2004). Also, a permanent tension can be generated between the experience of listening to their voices, understanding them and respecting the perspectives and points of view expressed by them, especially since the literature is currently discussing to what extent the list is the result of the children’s choices or is determined by their parents and their social context (Addabbo et al. 2004). In this sense, the concept of “adaptive preferences” can be useful, because it enables a systematic analysis of the relation between subjective appreciations and social contexts:

“People adjust their preferences to what they think they can achieve, and also to what their society tells them a suitable achievement is for someone like them. Women and other deprived people frequently exhibit such ‘adaptive preferences’ formed under unjust background conditions. These preferences will typically validate the status quo (Nussbaum 2007, p. 73).” (Fegter and Richter 2014, 745)

This can also somehow be applied to the participation of other social groups.

This shift in the approach demands the integration of new areas of work and the implementation of new ad hoc statistics, or the inclusion of specific modules in the existing statistics elaborated by international institutions. In addition, as mentioned by Heymann (2015), it would be very helpful if not only research centers but also international institutions and NGOs collaborated in the process. In any case, rather than seeing both measurement methods as quantitatively and qualitatively antithetical, it is more useful to understand them as the two ends of a continuous line. The position taken on each specific work will thus depend on the research question and the context in which the work is developed (Nilsson et al. 2015).

5 Definition of a System of Indicators to Measure the Well-Being of Boys and Girls

As mentioned before, the definition of a set of domains in which to measure children’s well-being is a necessary but insufficient condition for the establishment of a system of indicators. The context in which boys and girls live is essential. Therefore, prior to the proposition of a system of indicators, it is indispensable to make some methodological specifications.

First of all, in accordance with the context-dependent interpretation of the capability approach, it is important to remember that the geographical context greatly determines the definition of indicators, insofar as children are immersed in a specific culture with its own idiosyncrasy and in a specific historical moment that conditions their lives and, consequently, their well-being. As Nussbaum (2001) remarked, attending to the social and institutional context in which children act is also essential in order to include social inequalities and injustice in the research process.

Secondly, even if the same capabilities are used for the whole childhood period, it is evident that those capabilities can be operationalized in different ways during the different stages of the children’s physical and emotional development. Regarding those stages, the literature usually distinguishes between early childhood [0-5 years], childhood [6–11 years], early adolescence/preadolescence/first adolescence [11–14 years], and adolescence [15–17 years] (Biggeri et al. 2006; Lansdown 2001). Biggeri and Karkara (2014) state that a careful scheduling of the interventions regarding children’s well-being is necessary, and should include different kinds of educational socialization objectives in accordance with the age and maturity of the boy or girl as well as to their aspirations. This work considers that the developmental level and behavior of the age groups at both ends of the childhood period are quite different from the rest, which, even if not homogeneous, share certain common traits in terms of well-being. In this regard, Biggeri proposes a compressive list and adds certain particularities to some capabilities, indicating that their relevance increases with age, so that the whole list would only be applicable to the superior cohort. In fact, the age groups at both ends of the childhood period require special attention for they may present peculiarities that would call for an ad hoc study. For this reason, this work focuses on the 6 to 14 years age groups.

It is also important to keep in mind that special situations for children who do not live in “normalized” contexts require special treatments. There are various works on immigration (Velazquez and Alan 2011), social exclusion and poverty (Fernandez and Lee 2011; Lee 2011) that can be consulted to throw light on this matter, which will not be directly addressed in this work.

Finally, it is appropriate to point out that the next proposition, which is structured according to the domains and capabilities specified in the second section, is a list of theoretical indicators that responds to the purpose of measuring boys’ and girls’ well-being according to the presented approach, which puts life and not the markets in the center. It is also meant to be a proposition to incorporate new dimensions into well-being measurements so as to enable future analyses of reality based on them, given that often enough the required data are not available at the international, national or even regional level. The following tables show the indicators that should be considered for every area of interest or capability (Table 1).

Table 1 Capabilities and indicators
Full size table

6 Conclusions

The need for appropriate political and social-action responses to the negative effects that the great recession has had on boys’ and girls’ well-being has increased in the last years. However, even if important contributions and progress have been made at the theoretical level, they have not been sufficiently translated into tangible indicators, an essential step towards the development and assessment of public policies.

This work is based on the idea of childhood as a “represented reality”, a social construction, and on the significance of intergenerationality and adult-children relations. It is also in line with those propositions that understand children and adolescents as a group in their own right, with their own worries and priorities, and not simply as “adults-in-the-making” or “not-yets” (Fegter and Richter 2014). Therefore, this article considers children “as both ‘beings and becomings’” (Uprichard 2008, 303), a concept that is perfectly coherent with the capability and Life Sustainability approaches applied here to the analysis of children’s well-being. This choice entails acknowledging that children have specific needs throughout their lives, that they are social actors endowed with agency and autonomy (always in accordance with their age and maturity) and that, as a result of this, they are able to express their own points of view and priorities (Biggeri and Karkara 2014), obviously filtered by the socialization process. In this regard, the Life Sustainability approach enables a more complex understanding and a more thorough promotion of children’s well-being by setting it against a wider gender equality and social justice framework.

From this starting point and following the work of other authors (Robeyns 2003; Biggeri et al. 2006) with the intention of advancing towards the objective initially set out, a list of twelve capabilities relevant for children is proposed as a basis to define a list of tangible indicators, capable of synthesizing complex information into objective, specific and reality-based data. This line of work within the field of boys’ and girl’s well-being measurement implies giving an answer to a series of technical and conceptual questions.

A list of indicators is therefore proposed and, according to what Ben-Arieh et al. (2014): 16) suggested, it includes, together with the children’s living conditions and the objective measures of their well-being, their own perceptions, valuations and aspirations regarding their lives, and those of other social actors who are relevant for them. New domains are thus considered in consonance with the proposed list of capabilities. It is also a context-dependent list, designed for the Spanish context and focused on the 6 to 14 years age group. The reason for excluding the age groups at both ends of the childhood period is that, in their case, the operationalization of capabilities presents certain particularities that call for a specific study.

The preparation of this list has raised various questions. Among them, one related with the porosity of the borders between domains, i.e. with their interconnection and with the difficulty, in certain cases, to include an indicator in one specific domain or another. This is certainly conditioned by the fact that nowadays well-being is determined by a whole series of processes taking place in multi-layered dimensions. In this respect, the main objective of this work has been to open a line of work that, through further delving, concretizing and improving, will lead to a more refined proposition that will finally allow obtaining specific data for the measurement of well-being.