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We have long sought to employ social indicators to measure the condition of society and of subpopulations of interest (Hauser , 1997; Miringoff, 1993; Miringoff , 1999). In recent years, however, developing and using social indicators in ways that substantively shape public policies has emerged as a seminal interest and challenge. Motivating this interest are several concurrent reform movements that, in turn, are reshaping the way human services are organized and delivered in the United States.

Recent years have brought new and growing attention to the field of measuring and monitoring children’s well-being (Ben-Arieh and Goerge, 2001), partly as a result of movement toward accountability-based public policy that requires increasing amounts of information to provide more accurate measures of the conditions children face and the outcomes various programs achieve. At the same time, the rapid changes in family life have prompted an increased demand from child development professionals, social scientists, and the public for a clearer picture of children’s well-being (Andrews and Ben-Arieh, 1999; Hauser , 1997; Lee, 1997).

Practitioners, policymakers, and researchers are all too familiar with the challenges of measuring change in comprehensive community initiatives. The breadth and scope of these interventions, the multifaceted contexts for implementation, the elusiveness of outcome specificity, the vast array of potentially confounding factors, and the limited availability of appropriate and sensitive indicator measures can easily overwhelm even the most dedicated researchers and bring a well-crafted research design to a halt. It is altogether too tempting to run for the hills at the very thought of such an undertaking.

This chapter describes the impact of regional indicators through presentation of a case study that demonstrates how effective use of regional data can be a powerful strategy to achieve action on behalf of children and families. The Southern Institute on Children and Families envisioned and led the project. The Southern Institute has a record of effectively using regional data to raise awareness, build public/private sector action partnerships, and motivate public policymakers and administrators to improve the way government benefit programs are set forth in policy and implemented in reality.

In March 1999, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced “Our historic aim, that ours is the first generation to end child poverty forever…. It’s a 20-year mission but I believe it can be done.” Over the previous 20 years under successive Conservative Governments, relative child poverty as measured by the proportion of children living in families with equivalent income less than 60% of the contemporary median had increased nearly threefold from 14% in 1979 to 34% in 1997. When Blair made his announcement, he also said that it was the Government’s intention to monitor progress toward ending child poverty. In this chapter, I shall review the progress that has been made and the indicators that have been used.

I have, for many years, used quantitative data to compare the well-being of children across countries. This research includes, for example, international comparisons of child poverty and inequality using the Luxembourg Income Study (e.g., Phipps, 1999) as well as international comparisons of children’s health and well-being (e.g., overall health status, obesity, asthma, anxiety, hyperactivity, overall “success at school”) using a variety of reasonably comparable microdata surveys such as the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Mother/Child Supplement, the Health Survey for England and the Norwegian Health Survey (e.g., Phipps, 2001, 2002, 2004).

Indicators are the focus of intense interest in the policy community, particularly economic indicators. For example, indicators about the state of the economy, such as the unemployment rate, the poverty rate, housing starts, and inflation, are not only tracked over time but are awaited with anticipation and urgency and reported in headline stories in the media. The state of the economy affects the outcomes of elections, and the decisions made by government, including decisions made by the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the executive branch. Moreover, the data available for economic indicators are very up-to-date—for example, unemployment in the preceding month.

Research has shown that children are most successful as they enter schoolwhen they have developed the emotional capability to manage their feelings and behavior and when they have a base of strong academic and social skills. The research base also shows that children experience the greatest success in the early elementary years when families are involved in their children’s education, when teachers understand healthy child development, and when communities offer support that helps children and families grow and thrive.

In order to determine the quality of the lives of children, it is critical that we develop appropriate, reliable, accurate, and stable measures of their well-being in accordance with traditional rules of scientific rigor for the social sciences. The indicators we use must be valid indicators of the various domains of well-being. They must be based on the most reliable, accurate, and timely data available. They must be analyzed using accepted scientific methods and appropriate statistical techniques, acknowledging the limitations and assumptions of those methods and techniques. However, the best indicators, the most reliable data and the most scientific methods will be of no value in efforts to improve the lives of children if they are not presented to policymakers in a way that is both comprehensible and useful to them. Research, no matter how insightful and informative its findings, will have no significant impact if it is never read or understood by those who can impact the lives of the children being studied. The purpose of this chapter is to offer some advice to those gathering data on the current state of children in America and the world, and more particularly, to those using that data to advocate for changes in public policy.

This paper seeks to examineways that policymakers can better use indicators in their work to contribute to the overall improvement of the well-being of the people they serve. These observations come from 9 years as Secretary of Vermont’s Human Services Agency in the 1990s. All data referred to can be found in the annual Vermont Agency of Human Services Social Well Being of Vermonters reports at www.ahs.state.vt.us.