Multidimensional Deprivation from Children’s Perspectives: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis

Comparative evaluations of the multidimensional deprivation of children can be seen as a public interest and have many possible benefits. Although children's happiness and subjective well-being is studied and discussed extensively, cross national comparison of multidimensional deprivation among children is hardly examined. Making use of data of International Survey of Child Well-being (ISCWeB), this article aims to fill this gap. With this intention present study measures average deprivation for seven domains of child lives, like, ‘Home and the people the child lives with’, ‘Things the child has’, ‘Friends of the child’, ‘Area the child lives in’, ‘School’, ‘Use of time’, and ‘Satisfaction/Happiness’. The study is also concerned about three issues, like, (i) to check if domain- specific similarities and differences in average deprivation are gender sensitive, (ii) to check if domain- specific similarities and differences in average deprivation are age responsive, and, (iii) to examine the temporal changes in average deprivation that took place in different countries. Our results suggest that on the whole, substantial variations in average deprivation are perceived for different domains of child lives which are gender sensitive as well as age sensitive. Increasing deprivation is evidenced over time across the countries. There is no indication suggesting that if a country is disadvantageous in one domain, it will also be not well in other domains.