A Social Indicators Project Supported by the Foundation for Child Development

1. The Foundation for Child DevelopmentChild and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI)1975 to 2004 with Projections for 2005 A Social Indicators Project Supported by the Foundation for Child Development Brookings Presentation, March 28, 2006 Kenneth C. Land, Ph.D., Project Coordinator Duke University

2. What is the CWI? • A composite measure of trends over time in the quality of life, or well-being, of America’s children and young people. • It consists of several interrelated summary indices of annual time series of 28 social indicators of well-being.

3. The Objective of the CWI: • To give a sense of the overall direction of change in the well-being of children and youth in the United States as compared to 1975.

4. The CWI is designed to address the following types of questions: • Overall, on average, how did child and youth well-being in the United States change in the last quarter of the 20th century and into the present? • Did it improve or deteriorate, and by how much? • In which domains or areas of social life?

5. For specific age groups? • For particular race/ethnic groups? • For each of the sexes? • And did race/ethnic group and sex disparities increase or decrease?

6. Methods of Index Construction • Annual time series data (from vital statistics and sample surveys) have been assembled on some 28 national level indicators in seven quality-of-life domains. • Family Economic Well-Being • Health • Safety/Behavioral Concerns • Educational Attainment • Community Connectedness • Social Relationships (with Family and Peers) • Emotional/Spiritual Well-Being

7. These seven domains have been well-established in over two decades of empirical studies of subjective well-being by social psychologists and other social scientists. • In this sense, the CWI is an evidence-based measure of trends in averages of the social conditions encountered by children and youths in the United States.

8. Each of the 28 Key Indicators is indexed by percentage change from the base year, 1975. • That is, subsequent annual observations are computed as percentages of the base year. • Three indicators begin in the mid-1980s and use corresponding base years. • The base year is assigned a value of 100. • The directions of the indicator values are oriented such that a value greater (lesser) than 100 in subsequent years means the social condition measured has improved (deteriorated).

9. The time series of the 28 indicators are grouped together into the seven domains described above and domain-specific summary well-being indices are constructed. • Within these summary indices, each indicator is equally weighted. • The seven component indices are then combined into an equally-weighted summary index of child and youth well-being.

10. Significant Findings • The following charts show changes over time in the CWI and its various components. • Overall Index of Child Well-Being • Domain Specific Index: Educational Attainment • Math Scores • Reading Scores • Effects of Demographic Standardization

13. Focus: Educational Attainment Measures • NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress -- the “Nation’s Report Card” • Supervised by the National Assessment Governing Board. • Periodic assessment of student knowledge and abilities in a number of subjects. • NAEP long-term trend assessments in Math and Reading use the same testing instruments and procedures to replicate test results over time for children aged 9, 13, and 17.

16. The Interrelationship of Trends in Education and Educational Attainment • Are pre-Kindergarten enrollment rates leading indicators for Age-9 test scores?

18. Demographic Standardization • A technique for examining how a trend might be affected if the characteristics of the students had not changed over time: • For example, what would the math trend be if the race/ethnic composition of schools had remained the same as in 1978? • Thus, standardization controls for the effects of compositional changes on overall rates.

19. The Impacts of Changes in Student Composition since the 1970s on NAEP Test Scores Two significant changes are studied here: • Changes in the racial and ethnic composition of U.S. students.

21. The Impacts of Changes in Student Composition since the 1970s on NAEP Test Scores Two significant changes are studied here: • Changes in the racial and ethnic composition of U.S. students. • Changes in parents’ level of educational attainment.

27. Conclusions • The overall well-being of children and youth in the United States showed substantial improvement for the ten years from 1994 to 2003. • These improvements continued at a slow pace in 2004, and likely continued through 2005. • Historically, however, the CWI showed a decline in well-being for a number of years in the 1980s and reached low points in 1993 and 1994. • These declines mirror economic restructuring, recessions, and demographic changes. • Only since the year 2000 has the CWI improved to above 1975 levels.

28. Conclusions (cont.) • The Key Indicators in the Educational Attainment Domain have shown only slight changes since the mid-1970s: • Math Scores: • Slight improvement at all ages • Reading Scores: • Some improvement for age 9 • Little change for age 13 • Decline for age 17

29. Pre-Kindergarten Enrollment Rates and Test Scores • There was a positive relationship between increases in pre-Kindergarten enrollment rates in the 1990s and increases in age-9 NAEP mathematics and reading scores in the early-2000s. • This suggests that increases in pre-K enrollment rates at ages 3 to 4 were leading indicators of the increase in the test scores for 9-year olds a few years later.

30. Effects of the Changing Mix of Students • Our demographic standardization analyses show: • Improvements in parents’ education have had positive effects on student math scores. • The changing racial/ethnic distribution of students has had a smaller effect on test scores. • There has been a general downturn in age 17 reading test scores since 1992; the downturn would have been larger without increases in parental education levels over the past three decades.

31. Implications • If the positive association of pre-Kindergarten enrollments and age-9 NAEP test scores continues to hold, it can be anticipated that further increases in pre-K enrollments will result (with a 5 to 6 year lag) in continued improvements in the age-9 test scores.

32. Implications, Cont. • Improvements in parental educational attainments are partially transferred to the abilities of their children in mathematics and reading; this is consistent with over four decades of research on intergenerational socioeconomic status transfers. • The increases in rates of college graduation of young adults in the 1990s should lead to higher math test scores as they rear children over the next decade. • Increases in education levels for minority parents should reduce race/ethnic disparities in future test scores.

33. Implications, Cont. • Further research on the downturn in reading test scores for 17-year olds is required to explain the declines over the past decade. • For instance, we do not know the extent to which the decline is related to the widespread use of new media for entertainment (e.g., video games, the Internet) and corresponding declines in time devoted to reading and the extent to which such changes are reversible.

34. The CWI on the Web: http://www.soc.duke.edu/~cwi/