Blog by Olivier Thévenon at the OECD: “Childhood is a critical period in which individuals develop many of the skills and abilities needed to thrive later in life. Promoting child well-being is not only an important end in itself, but is also essential for safeguarding the prosperity and sustainability of future generations. As the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates existing challenges—and introduces new ones—for children’s material, physical, socio-emotional and cognitive development, improving child well-being should be a focal point of the recovery agenda.
To design effective child well-being policies, policy-makers need comprehensive and timely data that capture what is going on in children’s lives. Our new report, Measuring What Matters for Child Well-being and Policies, aims to move the child data agenda forward by laying the groundwork for better statistical infrastructures that will ultimately inform policy development. We identify key data gaps and outline a new aspirational measurement framework, pinpointing the aspects of children’s lives that should be assessed to monitor their well-being….(More)”.