To design, implement and monitor effective child well-being policies, policy-makers need data that better capture children’s lives, measure what is important to them and detect emerging problems and vulnerabilities early on. Despite improvements in recent decades, there are still important gaps in both national and cross-national child data. Countries can achieve progress if the right actions are taken.

These Guidelines represent the first attempt to provide international recommendations on collecting, publishing, and analysing subjective well-being data.

Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).

Ireland has shown a strong commitment to addressing child poverty and improving outcomes for children and young people. Responding to the needs of children and young people, particularly those most vulnerable, requires integrated policies and services. This report is part of a joint project between the OECD and the European Commission to strengthen policy and governance arrangements for tackling child poverty and improving outcomes for children and young people based on a whole-of-government approach. The report assesses recent policy, institutional and legislative developments in Ireland and compares outcomes for children and young people with those in other EU and OECD countries. It finds that despite progress, Ireland still has room for improvement on child poverty reduction, and more can be done to address the trust gap between young people in Ireland and their government. The report recommends Ireland to adopt measures to enhance inter-departmental and inter-agency co-operation, strengthen evidence-informed approaches, reinforce policy monitoring tools, and improve accountability mechanisms. It also recommends measures to support the effective implementation of Young Ireland, the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People (2023-28), and to ensure policy coherence.

This book focuses on projects using child indicators outside of a research context and provides a user-friendly set of materials to help professionals or organizations start and sustain high-quality child indicator projects. The book is based on the fundamental idea that better data leads to better decisions regarding programs for children. The number of people with experience and expertise in developing child indicator projects is limited in many countries. This initiative provides critical information on the topic in a cost-effective manner, and thereby fills an important niche regarding the use of child indicators. To the extent that it promotes more and better child indicator projects, the book leads to more attention for children and better decision-making regarding public support for children. It is also likely to increase the number of such projects that exist and to improve the quality of such projects. This easy-to-use and practical guide is for all professionals and organizations working with child indicators data.

This report uses the OECD Well-being Framework to systematically review how people’s economic, social, relational, civic and environmental experiences shape and are, in turn, shaped by their mental health. Based on this evidence, examples of co-benefits, or policy interventions that can jointly improve both mental health and other well-being outcomes, are identified for a range of government departments.

Social and Emotional Skills for Better Lives presents results from the OECD’s Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) 2023. SSES is the largest international effort to collect data on these skills among 10- and 15-year-old students. The report explores how the following skills differ by socio-demographic groups and how they relate to key life outcomes: task performance skills (persistence, responsibility, self-control and achievement motivation); emotional regulation skills (stress-resistance, emotional control and optimism); engaging with others skills (assertiveness, sociability and energy); open-mindedness skills (curiosity, creativity and tolerance); and collaboration skills (empathy and trust). The results show that students’ social and emotional skills – or 21st century skills – are linked to better life outcomes, including academic success, greater life satisfaction, healthier behaviours, less test and class anxiety, and more ambitious career plans. The Survey also finds that these skills are inequitably distributed among students by age, gender, and socio-economic background. SSES 2023 was conducted in Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Spain, Mexico, Ukraine, Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Gunma (Japan), Helsinki (Finland), Jinan (China), Kudus (Indonesia), Sobral (Brazil) and Turin (Italy). Results are compared to SSES 2019, which took place before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Childhood is changing in ways that we are still unpacking, affected by digitalization, globalization and climate change, as well as shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In many OECD education systems, child empowerment is increasingly an explicit aim of policies and practices. But it is often poorly defined, which risks turning it into a mere slogan. With the advancement of children’s rights, children are increasingly being included as stakeholders in decision-making processes. This report gives examples of how children in OECD countries can and do participate in making decisions about issues that affect them. The report examines children's emotional well-being and physical activity, and the role of schools as a physical space to create and support relationships. It also underlines the untapped potential of media education when it comes to seizing opportunities in childhood. Empowering all children to make the most of digital opportunities starts with further narrowing the gap in terms of access to digital tools and the Internet, where inequalities are persistent and pervasive. So, what does child empowerment mean today? Empowered children have the opportunity and ability to act on issues important and relevant to them, can learn by making mistakes, and are key contributors to democracy.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.