A central question for policy evaluation in the UK is how to measure wellbeing. To address this, wellbeing years (WELLBYs) were developed at the London School of Economics to assign social and economic value to changes in personal wellbeing. Now adopted in the Treasury's Green Book, a WELLBY represents a one-point change (on a 0-10 scale) in overall life satisfaction for one year, currently valued at GBP15,920 in 2024 prices.

While this approach works effectively for adults, a parallel measure for children has been absent, due to the lack of a consistent way of assigning value. Isaac Parkes, research associate in CEP's Wellbeing programme, proposes expanding the WELLBY framework by introducing child wellbeing years (C-WELLBYs).

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23 September 2025     Paper Number CEPPA018

Download PDF - How do you measure a child's wellbeing? (policy brief)

This CEP policy analysis is published under the centre's Community Wellbeing programme.