Potential and Problems in Developing Indicators on Child Well-Being from Administrative Data

This paper reviews the availability of local, state, and national data on family structure, stability, andthe well-being of children. It focuses on indicators of family structure and stability, but it also briefly reviewsthe literature on the effects of family structure and stability on child, adolescent, and early adult outcomes. Themajor themes of the paper are: (1) family structure and stability are not direct indicators of child well-being, butthey are associated with many of these indicators; (2) we need to rethink the way in which we measure familystructure and stability to take into account the many types of families in our society; and, (3) the study of familyinstability needs to pay more attention to related issues such as child abuse and neglect and foster careplacements.