Over the past 30 years, a prominent stream of research has addressed the conceptualization and measurement of child well-being and the construction of child well-being indices. This paper extends this accumulating body of research in five ways. First, an index of child well-being for US children ages 6-11 is constructed using individual children (micro-data) as the unit of analysis rather than populationbased measures which have typically been used in the past. Second, the new index uses a recently developed US data source (National Survey of Children's Health) to incorporate far more measures related to child well-being (69) into an index than have been used in past efforts. Third, this research explicitly separates child outcome measures (measures of child well-being) from contextual measures (seen as measures of risk or inputs). Fourth, separate indices are developed for children age 6-11 and those aged 12-17. Fifth, analyses show that contextual indicators add significant albeit modest power over and above common demographic measures (age, gender, race/ethnicity) as predictors of individual differences in well-being among children.

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Abstract— The development and use of indicators of child well‐being have grown dramatically over the past 20 years. This article discusses some of the fundamental characteristics and uses of child well‐being indicators. It also provides a short history of the development of the field in the United States, focusing heavily on 3 key interconnected initiatives. Finally, it explores a few of the key issues related to the future of the child well‐being indicator field in the United States.