The Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey of Britain made it possible first time to explore poverty using three different measures applied at the same time on the same sample. The measures were: lacking socially perceived necessities; being subjectively poor and having a relatively low income. These approaches are all commonly used to identify the poor and to measure poverty but rarely if ever in combination. In this article we have found that there is little overlap in the group of people defined as poor by these dimensions. There are reasons for this lack of overlap, connected to the reliability and validity of the different measures. However the people who are defined as living in poverty by different measures of poverty are different. This inevitably means that the policy response to poverty will be different depending on which measure is employed.We h ave at temp ted to analyse overlap in two ways.F i r s t ,b ye xploring the dimensions of poverty cumulatively, we have found that, the more dimensions people are poor on, the more they are unlike the non-poor and the poor on only one dimension, in their characteristics and in their social exclusion. Second, by treating particular dimensions as meriting more attention than others, we explored three permutations of this type and concluded that, while each permutation were more unlike the non-poor than those poor on a single dimension, they were not as unlike the non-poor as the cumulatively poor were. These results indicate that accumulation might be a better way of using overlapping measures of poverty than by giving priority to one dimension over another.The implication of the paper is that it is not safe to rely on one measure of povertythe results obtained are just not reliable enough. Surveys, such as the Family Resources Survey or the European Community Household Panel, which are used to monitor the prevalence of poverty, need to be adapted to enable results to be triangulated -to incorporate a wider range of poverty measures.

This is a comparison of child well-being in the 27 countries of the European Union and Norway and Iceland. It is based on 43 indicators forming 19 components derived from administrative and survey data around 2006. It covers seven domains: health, subjective well-being, personal relationships, material resources, education, behaviour and risks, housing and the environment. Comparisons are made of countries performance on each of the domains and components. Overall child well-being is highest in the Netherlands which is also the only country to perform in the top third of countries across all domains. Child well-being is worst in the former Eastern bloc countries with the exception of Slovenia. Lithuania performs in the bottom third on all domains. The United Kingdom does notably badly given its level of national wealth. The index is subjected to sensitivity analysis and analysis is undertaken to explain variations in child well-being. We find that there are positive associations between child well-being and spending on family benefits and services and GDP per capita, a negative association with inequality and no association with the prevalence of 'broken' families.

While the living conditions of children and young people in the European Union have gained increasing recognition across the EU, the well-being of children is not monitored on the European level. Based on a rights-based, multi-dimensional understanding of child well-being we analyse data already available for the EU 25, using series data as well as comparative surveys of children and young people. We compare the performance of EU Member States on eight clusters with 23 domains and 51 indicators and give a picture of children's overall well-being in the European Union. The clusters are children's material situation, housing, health, subjective wellbeing, education, children's relationships, civic participation and risk and safety.

While the living conditions of children and young people in the European Union have gained increasing recognition across the EU, the well-being of children is not monitored on the European level. Based on a rights-based, multi-dimensional understanding of child well-being we analyse data already available for the EU 25, using series data as well as comparative surveys of children and young people. We compare the performance of EU Member States on eight clusters with 23 domains and 51 indicators and give a picture of children’s overall well-being in the European Union. The clusters are children’s material situation, housing, health, subjective well-being, education, children’s relationships, civic participation and risk and safety

This article presents selected results from the first comparative study of social assistance across all 24 countries of the OECD. The scope of social assistance, discussed in the first section, is drawn to include all means-tested benefits in cash and kind, including those which provide benefits to higher income groups. The second section then presents in formation on the main programmes in each country, expenditures and groups of beneficia ries, trends over time, administrative struc tures, and operation of means tests. It concludes by developing a new measure of assistance benefit levels with which to evaluate different countries' systems. The third section distils from the country differences eight pat terns, or 'assistance regimes', varying from the limited, discretionary, decentralized models of Switzerland and Norway to the extensive, national, rights-based programmes of the English-speaking world; and from the relative generosity of Scandinavia and Australia to the low, marginalizing benefits of the Mediterranean countries and the USA. The last section turns to the economic pressures and political debates which are driving con temporary policy changes. The concepts and empirical data presented here will enable means-testing, targeting and selectivity to be brought back into the comparative study of European and wider welfare systems.

We are enjoined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to take account of the views of children. One way this can be done is by asking children about their lives in sample surveys. This paper is a comparison of the results obtained to sample survey questions on subjective well-being of children at two contrasting levels of analysis-international macro (European Union 29) and national level micro (England). At both levels, children"s well-being is accessed in terms of three subjective domains: (1) personal well-being, (2) relational well-being, and (3) well-being at school. At the micro level we also explore neighbourhood well-being. The results show that at the macro level personal well-being is associated with the material and housing circumstances but not family relationships or family structure. Well-being at school is not associated with any variable. Subjective health is only associated with family structure. At the micro level, although many of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children are found to be associated with their well-being in the four domains, these factors explain only a small amount of the variation in these well-being domains.

Although there is considerable research evidence to show that children in lone parent families are at increased risk of poverty, there have been few comparative analyses of lone parents in Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2009, this paper compares the prevalence and characteristics of lone parent families, analyses the poverty and deprivation risks of children, and evaluates the potential impact of social transfer income packages on child poverty reduction. We use the unique personal identifiers of mothers, fathers and partners to define lone parent families with greater precision. Using a multi-level framework, we find lower child poverty rates in countries with more generous social transfers, even after controlling for the country standard of living. A reverse pattern is observed for material deprivation: the negative effect of social transfer income washes out when the GDP per capita is controlled for, which itself has a negative and significant effect on material deprivation.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. INTERNATIONAL VARIATION IN CHILD SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING Andreas Klocke, Amy Clair and Jonathan BradshawAbstract Does the subjective well-being of children vary between countries? How does it vary? What explains that variation? In the past the subjective well-being of children has been compared at country level using published data derived from comparable international surveys, most commonly the Health Behaviour of School-aged Children survey. The league tables of child well-being produced in this way are fairly consistent. Thus for example the Netherlands consistently comes top of the rankings of OECD countries. Why is this? How does the Netherlands achieve this? In seeking to explain these national rankings we tend to explore associations with other national league tables. Thus in the UNICEF Report Card 11 (RC11), country ranking on subjective well-being were compared with country rankings on more objective domains of well-being -material, health, education, housing and so on, all at a macro level. In this paper we explore international variations in subjective well-being using micro data from the HBSC 2009-10 survey. We use the same indicators of subjective wellbeing as were used in RC11. We establish that the components form a reliable index. The ranking of countries is very similar to that obtained at a macro level. We also explore the distribution of subjective well-being. We then control for a number of factors associated with variations in subjective well-being at a micro level and, using linear regression with a country fixed effects model, establish whether national differences in subjective well-being are still sustained having taken into account of these independent factors. There are some changes in the ranking of countries having taken account of, particularly, behavioural indicators such as bullying. A multilevel model, taking into account country and school level effects, shows that that the effects of child characteristics on subjective well-being vary across countries.