The Good Childhood Report 2023: How can the damaging decline in children’s wellbeing be overturned?

About the research

The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Reports provide an annual overview of the current state of children’s subjective wellbeing, exploring specific themes or areas of interest in more depth in each report. The reports aim to identify issues and groups of children that may benefit from further attention and support. The Good Childhood Reports draw on the most robust, up-to-date data sources, including:

Key UK surveys available from the UK Data Service, such as Understanding Society and the Millennium Cohort Study, and international surveys including PISA and Children’s Worlds.
The Children’s Society’s own annual survey of children and young people (aged 10 to 17) and their parent/carer, which was developed in partnership with the University of York based on a programme of research dating back to 2005. Twenty-two online surveys have been conducted to date, including almost 46,000 children.

The Children’s Society has published twelve Good Childhood Reports to date, having most recently published The Good Childhood Report 2023 in September 2023. The Good Childhood Report 2023 provides an overview of the current state of children’s subjective wellbeing, and further explores the characteristics and experiences of children who have low wellbeing. In view of the broad range of social issues currently affecting life in the UK, the report also delved into children’s feelings about the future and their sense of safety in different settings and situations.

Key messages

The Children’s Society’s goal is to overturn the damaging decline in children’s wellbeing by 2030, setting a path for long-lasting growth. This goal reflects findings from a number of sources that include analysis of trend data from Understanding Society, which have shown a reduction in recent years in children’s (aged 10 to 15) mean scores for their happiness with their life as a whole. For example, The Good Childhood Report 2023 report showed that mean scores for this measure were significantly lower in 2020-21, the latest data available, than when the survey began in 2009-10.

Our analysis of Understanding Society trend data presented in The Good Childhood Report 2023 also showed that, in the latest wave of the survey (2020-21), children’s mean scores for their happiness with their friends, appearance, school and schoolwork were also all significantly lower than when the Understanding Society survey began. Family was the only aspect of life where there had been no significant change in children’s mean happiness score since the survey started.

Further analysis of these trends data also showed that girls’ mean happiness scores were significantly lower in 2020-21 than when the Understanding Society survey started in 2009-10 for each of the six measures. In addition, in 2020-21, girls were significantly less happy with their life as a whole and with their appearance than boys. For appearance, this has been the case ever since Understanding Society started reporting in 2009-10.

The Good Childhood Report 2023 included further analysis that focused on children who have low wellbeing. Data were aggregated across all available Understanding Society survey waves to explore whether the same children score low across the six indicators of subjective wellbeing, and to find out more about the characteristics, circumstances and experiences of children with low scores. While the analysis showed that the majority of children aged 10 to 15 did not score low on any of the six measures of subjective wellbeing included in Understanding Society, it identified that about a quarter were unhappy with at least one aspect of their life, and it highlighted some differences in the likelihood of low wellbeing linked to children’s characteristics or circumstances.

The challenge

The Good Childhood research programme

When The Children’s Society started its Good Childhood research programme in 2005, measures of children’s wellbeing were often based on adults’ views of how children’s lives were going, typically parents, carers or teachers’ reports. However, it is crucial that children themselves are asked how they feel about their own lives. Listening to children’s own views and experiences has been at the heart of The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood research programme. The Good Childhood Report was the first to provide a state of the nation overview of children’s own views of their subjective wellbeing, drawing on robust sources available through the UK Data Service in addition to our own surveys.

While fortunately many children in the UK are happy with their lives, there is a small but not insignificant proportion who do not feel so positive about their life, or specific aspects of it. The Good Childhood Reports therefore aim to update on the latest national and, when available, international trends in children’s wellbeing, and to explore how they vary for different groups of children, based on their characteristics, circumstances and experiences, in order to identify those who might be in most need of support, and understand more about what affects particular groups, as well as identifying knowledge and evidence gaps.

The Good Childhood Report 2023

Our work focuses on supporting the most disadvantaged children. The Good Childhood Report 2023 therefore aimed to understand more about the characteristics, circumstances and experiences of children with low wellbeing. It also explored children’s feelings about the future and broader issues in society, to provide a better understanding of what matters most to children, now and for their future. Not only does this relate to their wellbeing, but it can also inform how adults respond to children’s needs and priorities.

The approach

The annual Good Childhood Report draws on some of the most robust and timely data sources available on children’s subjective wellbeing each year. Findings are presented from The Children’s Society’s own research programme, together with other key sources on the wellbeing of children in the UK, such as the Understanding Society survey, which has been reported on in eleven Good Childhood Reports to date. Whenever possible, the reports also draw on the latest international data sources.

The Children’s Society developed The Good Childhood Index in 2010 to further the evidence base on children’s wellbeing. It consists of a multi-item measure of overall life satisfaction, which is considered to be more reliable than a single measure, and 10 single-item domain measures which ask children about their happiness with different aspects of their life which are known to be important. The 10 aspects of life that the Good Childhood Index asks children and young people aged 10 to 17 about are: family, friends, home, health, time use, money and things, the future, choice, appearance, and school. These questions are included in The Children’s Society’s own annual household survey of children and young people (aged 10 to 17) and their parent or carer. These surveys collect routine data on children’s wellbeing, their household, and other characteristics. They also include a flexible module of questions which varies annually to look at other topical issues that are important to children and young people. The survey reported on in the latest Good Childhood Report was undertaken between May and June 2023, and collected responses from a sample of just over 2,000 children and young people (aged 10 to 17) and their parent or carer from across the UK. Children and young people were purposively selected to closely match the demographic (age and gender), socio-economic, and geographic make-up of the wider population.

Alongside presentation of the latest data on children’s wellbeing, including responses to our Good Childhood Index, every year The Good Childhood Report focusses on a particular topic area that is relevant to children’s wellbeing. For example, The Good Childhood Report 2023 explored the characteristics and experiences of children who have low wellbeing, together with children’s feelings about the future and issues in society. Further examples of themes that previous reports have focused on are children’s experiences of school (The Good Childhood Report 2022), children’s happiness with their friends (The Good Childhood Report 2020), gender differences in wellbeing and experiences of multiple disadvantage (The Good Childhood Report 2017). Other reports have focused on international comparisons (most recently The Good Childhood Report 2020).

The Children’s Society makes every effort to involve children and young people in our Good Childhood research. We involve children and young people in question development and testing for our annual household survey. Each year, a module of topical questions is included in the survey, and these questions are developed and tested in conjunction with a small sample of children. A small pilot of the whole survey is then conducted with children and their parent or carer to check that the questions are working before the survey goes live. We also involve children via consultation work. For example, in 2023 over 250 children and young people were involved in developing recommendations for the report, by sharing their ideas, experiences and suggestions for what they felt needs to change to improve children’s wellbeing. Young people also support our dissemination of the research findings, by producing accompanying materials, taking part in presentations and discussions of the research findings, or supporting the production of additional resources. In addition, for the first time, we asked children and young people who took part in the annual survey in 2023 (as well as some of those who took part in the above activities) for their feedback on which themes should be prioritised in future research.

For more information on data sources and methodological considerations, see The Good Childhood Report 2023, Introduction, pages 5 to 11.

Data used from the UK Data Service collection

In addition to reporting on the results of our own household surveys, The Good Childhood Reports draw on sources of data available through the UK Data Service, notably the Understanding Society survey (UK Longitudinal Household Survey), and in previous years the Millennium Cohort Study. In the absence of more comprehensive and regular nationwide measurement of children’s wellbeing, it has been crucial for us to be able to draw upon these cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, as they ask children in the UK about their life satisfaction and therefore allow us to monitor trends and changes in wellbeing over time.

Understanding Society has been a particularly helpful source as it enables us to produce and track trends in children’s wellbeing over time. Each year, The Good Childhood Report compares data from the latest available Understanding Society wave to the first wave (2009-10), to explore whether children’s wellbeing has significantly declined, significantly increased or remained broadly stable for each of the six measures of subjective wellbeing that Understanding Society covers. Those measures are children’s (aged 10 to 15) happiness with their life as a whole, family, friends, appearance, school, and schoolwork. Further analysis also allows for the identification of variations between different groups of children, for example based on their demographic characteristics. Such information is essential in identifying areas of children’s lives, or indeed groups of children, that would benefit from further attention or support.

We are grateful to the University of Essex and the UK Data Service for providing free-of-charge access to Understanding Society data for research purposes.

Research findings

This case study focuses on findings from The Children’s Society’s latest Good Childhood Report, published in September 2023. The focus will mostly be on those findings that were drawn from data available via the UK Data Service (Understanding Society data), rather than on those based on The Children’s Society’s own household surveys and will centre on analysis related to low subjective wellbeing.

Much of The Children’s Society’s work is focused on children who are facing difficulties in their lives. Therefore, as well as exploring what children across the UK think of their lives as a whole, The Good Childhood Reports always consider the experiences of the relatively small number of children who are unhappy with one or more aspects of their lives. To help develop a better understanding of the experiences, characteristics and circumstances of those children who have low subjective wellbeing, The Good Childhood Report 2023 included further analysis focused on those children (aged 10 to 15) who have low scores on the six measures of subjective wellbeing contained in Understanding Society. Low wellbeing was defined as scoring below the midpoint on the relevant scales. Understanding Society uses a seven-point scale for its six subjective wellbeing measures, where 1 is ‘completely happy’ and 7 is ‘not at all happy’. The Children’s Society’s analysis converts this to an eleven-point scale and reverses scoring so that 0 is ‘not at all happy’ and 10 is ‘completely happy’ (in line with the scale used for the subjective wellbeing measures in our own household survey).

To conduct this analysis on low wellbeing, we combined data from all waves of the Understanding Society survey available to date (from 2009-10 to 2020-21), which provided a large sample to work from and allowed for the impact of multiple factors on the wellbeing of children to be considered. This approach also allowed for an exploration of the experiences of specific groups, with a view of finding out more about who the children who have low wellbeing are, and whether they are unhappy with multiple aspects of their lives.

An advantage of using Understanding Society for research into children’s subjective wellbeing is that it is possible to match children’s responses to questions about their subjective wellbeing with information about their family’s circumstances, provided by the adults they live with. Further, as it is representative of the UK population, the findings of this analysis are generalisable to the UK population of children aged 10 to 15.

Key findings of our analysis into children’s low subjective wellbeing were as follows.

Almost one quarter of children felt unhappy with at least one aspect of their life.

While the majority of children (75.7%) did not feel unhappy (or score below the midpoint of the scale) about any of the six aspects of life asked about in Understanding Society, about a quarter (24.3%) felt unhappy with at least one aspect of their life, and almost one in ten with two or more (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Proportion of children (aged 10 to 15) unhappy with multiple aspects of life across survey waves.

A chart displaying the number of measures on which children have low scores/low wellbeing. Percentage of children is on the Y axis, number of measures on the X.

Source: Understanding Society survey, waves 1 to 12, children aged 10 to 15, UK, weighted data. Presented in The Good Childhood Report 2023, p. 33.

Family was the aspect of life most strongly related to a child’s overall wellbeing

Analysis showed that, of the five specific areas of life examined in Understanding Society (family, friends, appearance, school, and schoolwork), family was most strongly related to children’s overall wellbeing: being unhappy with family had the strongest association with being unhappy with life as a whole among children.

Boys were more unhappy with schoolwork, girls with their appearance, friendships and life as a whole

In terms of specific groups of children, when only demographic characteristics were considered, further analysis (using logistic regression) showed that there were some differences in the likelihood of low wellbeing linked to children’s characteristics or circumstances. Notably, girls were more likely to be unhappy with their appearance, friendships, and life as whole, while boys were more likely to be unhappy with schoolwork. Older children, and children living in households that are struggling financially, were also found to be more likely to score low across some measures of subjective wellbeing.

Children’s relationships were important for their wellbeing

In terms of specific areas of focus, further analysis (using logistic regression) demonstrated that particular aspects of children’s relationships with their family and friends were important for their wellbeing. Feeling unsupported by family, having no friends, or having been bullied at school were associated with being unhappy with one or more of the six aspects of life that children were asked about (when controlling for other factors such as children’s individual characteristics, family or economic circumstances, and the other relationship measures).

Children in families struggling financially were more likely to unhappy with school

When family relationship variables were added to the analysis (using logistic regression), some of the other factors explored previously lost their significance, highlighting the importance of family relationship variables for children’s wellbeing. One finding that remained significant was that children in families who were struggling financially were more likely to be unhappy with school – a finding that is particularly noteworthy given the current economic context (at the time of writing).

Together, these findings show that while, reassuringly, most children seemed to lead relatively happy lives, a smaller but notable proportion of children was struggling with their overall life satisfaction and/or low happiness with specific aspects of their lives. While it did not seem to be the same children scoring low across items, the analysis did show that different experiences, characteristics or circumstances may be related to children being more likely to have low wellbeing. These findings need to be acted upon, so that more is understood about children’s experiences, and so that children’s wellbeing can be improved, with support targeted at those who need it most.

Recommendations for policy

The Children’s Society has been calling for a number of years for comprehensive, national measurement of children’s wellbeing to help us to better understand the experiences of children including variations by characteristics and geography. Often, the experiences of the most vulnerable children are not well captured by household surveys and smaller sample sizes. To fully understand and respond to the key issues for children, we argue that their subjective wellbeing must:

be measured at least annually

with data collected on a national scale

with data that can be analysed at a local level.

We have actively campaigned for better wellbeing measurement, for example through our work with the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and the Gregson Family Foundation to build the case for national measurement of children’s wellbeing (2019), and publishing a report on teachers’ views on national children’s wellbeing measurement in schools (2023).

The Children’s Society developed a set of recommendations in direct response to findings from The Good Childhood Report 2023. These recommendations were grounded in the research presented in the report, and relate to groups of children and areas of life identified in the evidence as needing further attention and support. To note, these recommendations also draw on further findings from the report not presented in the present case study, including those based on analysis of The Children’s Society’s own household survey 2023. In addition, over 250 children and young people shared their ideas, experiences, and suggestions for what needs to change to improve children’s wellbeing to help create this year’s policy recommendations.

The priority recommendations for government and wider decision-makers were as follows:

Protecting children from the rising cost of living, by renewing investment in social security for children through an increase to child benefits. As a minimum, the Government should target increases for the families facing the brunt of price rises by uplifting the child element of Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit and removing the two-child limit.

Creating a system that starts with prevention by understanding how children are doing. As discussed above, the Government should measure children’s subjective wellbeing at least annually and on a much larger national scale across England and Wales. There should also be a national rollout of early support hubs in every community to enable young people to access early intervention support.

Taking responsibility for girls’ unhappiness by commissioning research without further delay. The Government needs to understand why young people, and especially girls, are more unhappy with their appearance, so that effective action can be taken.

Enabling schools to support pupils’ wellbeing by expanding mental health support teams (MHSTs) to all schools with long-term funding. The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Department for Education (DfE) must make sure that no child in England goes without mental health and wellbeing support at school.

Responding to the needs of parents, carers, and families by working with the voluntary and community sector. DHSC should pilot innovative parent and carer mental health and wellbeing support offers. These could work in partnership with MHSTs and family hubs, once available in all areas.

Further information, including more detailed recommendations for school, local authority and government decision makers for each of these themes can be found in The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood 2023: Summary and recommendations report.

The impact

The annual Good Childhood Report is The Children’s Society’s flagship report. It is central to our strategic objective to work with children and young people, and others who support them, and to create meaningful, innovative ways to respond to early signs of their low wellbeing. The reports provide a key opportunity to affect change and improve the wellbeing of children and young people as it contributes to furthering our understanding and enhancing the wider evidence base of different aspects of children and young people’s wellbeing.

Its audiences are wide-ranging, and include academics and other researchers; government departments, policymakers and other decision-makers/political audiences that have stakes or interest in children and young people’s wellbeing; schools and practitioners who work with and for children and young people; parents and carers; faith communities; and, of course, children and young people themselves.

Internal impact

Internally, The Good Childhood Reports have a direct impact on the work of The Children’s Society. The reports inform the organisation’s work on children’s wellbeing, highlighting areas, or groups of children, that need further support, as well as identifying knowledge gaps. Our goal of overturning the damaging decline in children’s wellbeing by 2030, setting a path for long-lasting growth, reflects among other sources the patterns identified in the trends data from Understanding Society: as mentioned above, analysis of trends data from Understanding Society has shown a reduction in recent years in children’s (aged 10 to 15) mean scores for their happiness with their life as a whole.

External impact

Externally, the reports are used to further the evidence base on children’s wellbeing, including the identification of evidence gaps and of areas of life and groups of children that may benefit from particular attention or support. Findings from our household surveys, reported on in the annual Good Childhood Reports, have been a key source for the Office for National Statistics’ Wellbeing Measurement Framework, as well as for the DfE’s annual State of the Nation reports on children’s wellbeing.

Increased profile and opportunities

The Good Childhood Reports receive good press coverage annually (2023 examples include Sky News, The Guardian, CYP Now) as well as attention from the sector (notably the What Works Centre for Wellbeing). This has led to us being invited to sit on several steering and advisory groups, held for example by the Office for National Statistics. The reports also help strengthen the organisation’s profile as leaders in calling for national measurement of children’s wellbeing, a call which is widely shared by others including The Times Education Commission.