Family Well-Being

This ground-breaking work plugs a yawning gap in the methods developed by social scientists to measure ‘well-being’, which to date have not featured a targeted measure of this variable for family groups. As Southern European societies crack under the strain of austerity programs imposed as a response to the current financial crisis, measuring the well-being of families is becoming an ever more urgent task. The contributors call for the gathering of data on a more broad-based definition of the family that accounts for social changes in recent decades. These changes have been seismic, with dramatic increases in globalization, population aging, labor force restructuring, increases in participation by mothers in the labor force, and single-parent families. This greater diversity in family structure makes the proposals put forward here a welcome addition to the debate, advocating a more inclusive understanding of how various families are impacted by the influences of social change, and arguing that these indices are essential to guide research, policy development, resource allocation and social evaluation.