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This paper is produced alongside Innocenti Report Card 7 "Child Well-being in Rich Countries". It provides more detail on how the indicators were chosen for the Report Card, and how they were combined into components and then into dimensions. It also provides additional analysis to complement the Report Card.

Children’s opportunities to develop according to their talents and competencies and to establish trust in the adults with whom they live, their neighbourhoods, kindergardens, schools and municipalities crucially influence the future of the society in which they grow up. Yet, international comparisons have until recently centred on resource availability, material well-being and health outcomes. However, initiatives such as the OECD/PISA and WHO surveys of ‘healthy lifestyles among school-aged children’ have explored child well-being along several dimensions. In the case of Germany child well-being appears to be more advanced in the western than the eastern regions of the country, and in the south compared to the north. On the basis of the analysis a series of policy recommendations may be identified for the federal states and the municipalities concerning dimensions of child well-being which deserve special attention in their particular regional context.

Die Chancen von Kindern, sich in ihrer Lebensumwelt entsprechend ihren Fähigkeiten und Kompetenzen entwickeln zu können und Vertrauen zu den Erwachsenen aufzubauen, mit denen sie in Elternhaus, Nachbarschaft, Kindergarten, Schule und Gemeinde zusammenleben oder zusammen sind, entscheiden auch über die Zukunft der Gesellschaft, in der sie aufwachsen. Internationale Vergleiche stellten lange fast ausschließlich das materielle Risiko von Kindern in den Mittelpunkt. Die Bildungsvergleiche der OECD/PISA und die Übersichten der WHO zu gesundheitsbezogenen Verhaltensweisen von Schulkindern haben die Perspektive erweitert. Darauf aufbauend vergleicht die Innocenti Report Card 7 (2007) ‘Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child-wellbeing in Rich Countries’ die Situation von Kindern anhand der sechs Dimensionen: Materielle Lage, Gesundheit und Sicherheit, Bildung, die Beziehungen zu Eltern und Freunden, die Risiken im Alltag und das subjektive Wohlbefinden von Kindern.