Handbook of Children’s Risk, Vulnerability and Quality of Life

This handbook makes a major contribution to the growing international research and policy interest in children’s experienced well-being or quality of life in childhood, linking it to ongoing research on children’s risk and vulnerability. The editors and contributors adopt the broader concept of ‘risk’ in addition to ‘vulnerability’. Not much work considers the connections between risks that children experience and their quality of life. In examining children’s quality of life, the chapters discuss various issues of risk and vulnerability that may affect their lives and also how the quality of childhood might be enhanced and maintained even in the face of these factors. The chapters discuss experiences of violence and abuse; access to basic services such as housing, health and education; and children’s vulnerability due to broader external factors such as war, conflict, and environmental events. The volume also includes the impacts of new technologies on children and the consequent risks and vulnerabilities they may face, alongside the benefits.

This important volume brings together a diverse range of perspectives from established experts and emerging scholars in these fields of work. It covers a wide range of geographical and cultural contexts, and includes theoretical, empirical, policy and practice-based contributions. This handbook is a natural first point of reference for academics and policy professionals interested in quality of life, well-being, and children's rights.

“The handbook on children’s risk, vulnerability, and quality of life presents a detailed empirical compilation from regions including South America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania, describing and analysing the perspectives that children hold of these concepts. … the need for state and regional policies that investigate, incorporate, and facilitate the participation of children in their communities to improve their quality of life is reiterated.”(Aquiles Pérez Delgado, Applied Research in Quality of Life, Vol. 18 (6), 2023)​

Habib Tiliouine has been an active member of both the International Society of Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and the International Wellbeing Group (IWGp) since 2003. He is a member of many international journals editorial boards (Journal of Happiness Studies, Applied Research in Quality of Life and the International Journal of Happiness and Development). He has written more than 70 articles and book chapters, and  co-edited many books, such as The State of Social Progress of Islamic Societies:  Social, Economic, Political, and Ideological Challenges (Springer, 2016).

Habib Tiliouine is the head founder of the Laboratory of Educational Processes & Social Context (Labo-PECS) of the University of Oran2, Algeria (in 2001) which conducts survey research for public information and policy purposes. The time series database contains questionnaire responses of more than 18,000 people from different regions of the country, including the southern Sahara areas. Two of these surveys were partly financed by the Algerian Agence Nationale de la Recherche sur la Santé (ANDRS). He has published papers on social development, quality of life and the relationship between subjective well-being, regional Algerian cultures and other factors (health, religiosity, meaning of life and Eudaimonic well-being). Tiliouine has collaborated with UNICEF and national bodies to produce reports analysing the situation of Algerian children and school indicators, and contributed in the World Happiness Report (2017). He is also Principal Investigator for Algeria in the international research project ‘Children’s Worlds’. He supervises Magister and Doctorat research theses on quality of life, psychology and education. Tiliouine received the Distinguished Fellow Award from ISQOLS for his contributions to quality-of-life research in 2015.

Denise Benatuil is the Coordinator of the interview room for abused children of the Tutelar Public Ministry of Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has developed postdoctoral studies at Universidad Nacional de Lomas de Zamora, Argentina at the LOMASCYT project Quality of life of 10-year-old boys and girls living in the province of Buenos Aires Argentina and in the province of West Cape Town, South Africa Directed by Dra Graciela Tonon. She was guest co-editor of the Special Issue Quality of Life in South America of Applied Research in Quality of Life. Denise has published articles in different international Journals and chapters in different books and Handbooks. Recent publications include journal articles and several book chapters on quality of life and on undertaking research with children. She was member of the Children Understanding of Well-being International Research Network. She is Professor at the Master Psychology program at Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires.  She has directed doctoral thesis and has taught Psychology for more than ten years in undergraduate and post-graduate programs in Argentina. She was the Director of Undergraduate Psychology Studies at Palermo University in Buenos Aires (2009-2018).

Maggie K.W. Lau is Research Associate Professor in the School of Graduate Studies and Institute of Policy Studies at Lingnan University. Her research interests focus on poverty and social exclusion, child poverty and child well-being, as well as adolescent health. Her publications have appeared in Social Indicators Research, Child Indicators Research, Children and Youth Services Review, Social Policy & Administration, Health Policy, International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Drug and Alcohol Review, and Nicotine and Tobacco Research. She is the co-editor of Poverty in a Rich Society: The Case of Hong Kong (with David Gordon, The Chinese University Press, Spring 2017), and Managing Social Change and Social Policy in Greater China: Welfare Regimes in Transition (with Ka Ho Mok, Routledge). She has received grant awards from the Research Grants Council and the UK Economic and Social Research Council, as well as the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office (formerly Central Policy Unit) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.