Measuring children's subjective well‑being

Promoting child well-being is a prominent priority across OECD countries, creating a pressing need for reliable measures of children’s living conditions and outcomes, including their subjective well-being – that is, how children themselves perceive and evaluate their lives. This report outlines the rationale for collecting data on child subjective well-being and reviews the main constructs and methodologies employed in key international surveys, including the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being, the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills, and Programme for International Student Assessment. It critically examines the strengths and limitations of existing measures in terms of policy relevance, brevity, and statistical robustness. The report further considers how current approaches align with – or diverge from – the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being, which were developed primarily for adult populations. Finally, it identifies key challenges in advancing the measurement of children’s subjective well-being, with particular attention to ensuring age appropriateness, cultural sensitivity, cross-national comparability, and alignment with national policy priorities.