The interaction between parents and children as a relevant dimension of child well being. The case of Italy

This paper aims at measuring the functionings of social interaction, a relevant dimension in the description and conceptualisation of child well-being by using the capability approach. In this paper we deal with a special dimension of this capability that involvesthe capability of interaction between parents and child. We propose a fuzzy expert system to measure this capability. To apply the model we use a data set based on a matched data source of ISTAT (Italian National Statistical Office 1998) multipurpose survey on familyand on children condition in Italy to recover information on children’s education, the socio-demographic structure of their families, child care provided by relatives and parents according to the type of activities in which the children are involved and Bank of ItalySurvey on household income and wealth year 2000 (SHIW00). This is a first step of a more complex system allowing for a richer set of indicators on capabilities in order to measure child well-being.