THE CHILD AND YOUTH WELL-BEING INDEX (CWI)

The Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI) is an evidence-based measure of trends over time in the quality of life or well-being of America's children and young people.  It comprises several interrelated composite/summary indices of annual time series of numerous social indicators of the well-being of children and young people in the United States The composite indices give a sense of the overall direction of change (improvement or deterioration) in the well-being of America's children and youth, as compared to two base years of the indicators, 1975 and 1985.  This web page is organized as follows:

n A brief textual description of the Child and Youth Well-Being Index given in Section A.

n Section B contains General Public Presentations and Press Releases; beginning in 2004, press releases will be added to Section B annually in March of each year as the CWI and its projected values are updated; descriptions of general public presentations and other articles in the press on the Index and its potential policy implications also will be made available in Section B.

n A table that gives brief labels of the seven domains of well-being and all of the specific social indicators in each of the domains of the summary indices is given in Section C.

n Graphical representations of trends in the overall summary index, 1975-2006, with projected values for 2007, are given in Section D.  Graphical representations of trends in the corresponding domain-specific indices for each of the seven domains of well-being in the overall summary indices, 1975-2006, with projected values for 2007, also are accessible from Section D.

n Graphical representations of trends in the overall summary index, 1985-2006, with projected values for 2007, are given in Section E. Graphical representations of trends in the corresponding domain-specific indices for each of the seven domains of well-being in the overall summary indices, 1985-2006, with projected values for 2007 also are accessible from Section E.

n  Graphical representations of trends in the summary index for three age groups (infancy/preschool, childhood, and adolescence/teenage years), 1975-2006 are given in Section F. 

n Graphical representations of trends in the summary index for three race/ethnic groups (white, black, and Hispanic children and youths), 1985-2005 are given in Section G.

n Tables containing the index values of all of the summary indices, domain-specific index, and the time series of rates of the component social indicators with base years 1975 and 1985 are accessible in Section H.

n Files containing the scientific papers describing the indices, their components, and the methodology of construction are given in Section I.  Current research papers to further develop and extend the indices also are accessible in Section I.

The Child and Youth Well-Being Index Project is coordinated by Kenneth C. Land, Ph.D., John Franklin Crowell Professor, Department of Sociology, P.O. Box 90088, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0088 (e-mail: kland@soc.duke.edu).  Other researchers involved in the project include Vicki L. Lamb, Ph.D., Sarah O. Meadows, Ph.D., and Hui Zheng, M.A..  The Project is supported by grants from the Foundation for Child Development (http://www.fcd-us.org/)

General questions and data inquiries can be addressed to the following individuals. For general questions about the Child Well-Being Index, contact Kenneth C. Land at the address given in the preceding paragraph. For questions concerning data sources and the database used for the construction of the CWI and its component indices, contact Hui Zheng (huizheng@soc.duke.edu).