Children’s Wellbeing in East and Southeast Asia: A Preliminary Comparison

Much progress has been made recently in expanding the literature on international comparison of children’s wellbeing. Nevertheless, most studies are skewed toward western or European countries, with the Asian nations rarely included. The purpose of this study is to fill the gap by conducting an exploratory comparison of children’s wellbeing in East and Southeast Asian countries. A multidimensional approach is adopted by analyzing material wellbeing, health, educational wellbeing, behavior, environment, and psychosocial wellbeing, together with their associated components and indicators. All countries are ranked according to their overall child wellbeing indices, including and excluding the dimension of psychosocial wellbeing. The results show that Japan, Korea, and Singapore perform best while Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia do less well in terms of children’s wellbeing. Various issues, including the paucity of data, are discussed as items to be considered in the agenda for future research.