the United States.<sup>4</sup> Using the year 1975 as a base (taking a value of 100), the research teams have calculated the index every year, thus providing a measure of progress of children (roughly ages 0-17) both in the United States and in each state. Primary conclusions from the 1975-2003 period include the observation that children’s well-being has not increased monotonically over time, but it fell in the 1980s and rose only slightly above its 1975 levels by 2003; the limited improvement is largely due to increasing obesity in the 1990s, but this has been counter-balanced by improvements in violence; and children of all races seem to be improving their well-being.

This study aims to construct a Brazilian Youth Well-Being Index (YWI), based on indicators that are appropriate to, and available in, Brazil. It uses readily available data to calculate the YWI for each state, thus allowing for a comparison of the well-being of youth across Brazil. The hope is that the paper will sufficiently present the methodology such that the exercise can be repeated annually, thus allowing a tracking of the well-being of youth in each state over time and monitoring the status of all youth in Brazil across time.<sup>5</sup> Three indices are developed in this paper. First, the Youth Well-Being Index (YWI) is comprised of indicators that are relevant only to today’s youth, defined as those age 1524.<sup>6</sup> These indicators include many of those indicators that are reported for youth in the general literature, and classified into: behaviors (youth violence, teen pregnancy, substance use); health outcomes that are a result of risk-taking behaviors (HIV/AIDs 4 The indicators, by domain, used by the Duke University study are: (i) material well-being - poverty rate, secure parental employment rate, median annual income, percent of children with health insurance coverage; (ii) social relationships - percent of children in families headed by a single parent, percent of children who moved in the last year; (iii) health - infant mortality rate, low birth weight rate, mortality rate ages 1-19, percent of children with very good/excellent health, percent of children with activity limitations, percent of overweight children and adolescents; (iv) safety/behavioral concerns - teenage birth rates; percent of violent crime victimization, percent of violent crime offenders, rate of cigarette smoking, rate of alcoholic drinking, rate of illicit drug use; (v) productivity (educational attainment) - reading test scores, mathematics test scores; (vi) place in community - percent of pre-school enrollment, percent of persons who have received a high school diploma, percent of youth not working and not in school, percent of people who have received a bachelor’s degree, rate of voting in presidential elections; and (vii) - <u>emotional/spiritual well being</u> - suicide rate, rate of weekly religious attendance, percent who report religion as being very important.

> 5 The CWI created by Duke University is reported regularly in the popular press ( _New York Times_ , _National Public Radio_ ) and is the subject of academic conferences and publications (Brookings Institute - <u>http://www.brook.edu/comm/events/20040324.htm, http://www.brookings.edu/es/ccf/pubs_index.htm)</u> 6 This is roughly the age range used in this paper.  The exact age range could not be used since the exercise in this paper intentionally uses existing indicators, which themselves use a variety of age ranges.

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