Children in Italy. Towards maps of indicators on the condition and on the well-being of children and adolescents in Italy

This article is about the development of a national system of indicators of context and of well-being concerning the condition of children and adolescents in Italy. In particular, the paper makes a comparative analysis, dating back to 2005-2006, of the index of well-being in the various regions of Italy. The map of indicators is organized in 6 dimensions or domains (relations and bonds; material and cultural wellbeing/ deprivation; health; school inclusion; safety and danger; diffusion and use of services), which are divided into 24 sub-dimensions and formed by 111 indicators. The results show that there are inequalities in children’s well-being between the regions in the Centre and North of Italy and the ones in the South. Umbria, Valle d’Aosta, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany are the regions with the best results, while Sicily and Campania are last in the rankings. However, it must be underlined that, despite the overall results, the values of the various synthetic indexes referring to each of the six dimensions can vary considerably for a region, thus influencing to a certain extent the stability of the final ranking. The paper then presents the most representative indicators of the dimensions used to measure well-being.