Family Social Capital as a ‘Safety Net’ For Adolescents’ Well-Being: Lessons for Ghana’s Child and Family Welfare Policy

The notion that the measurement of subjective well-being is key to social policy development has been increasingly acknowledged. Indicators that encapsulate people’s overall mental health and cognitive evaluations of their own lives have expounded a vital aspect of the well-being concept that can be applied to social policies when amassed at the aggregate population level. Crucially, the resulting new policy paradigm has also included a broad move beyond objective measures of young people’s well-being by involving them to explain issues that matter to their well-being in their own voices. In turn, social indicators of quality of life and embracing social determinants of health have more readily been advanced to shape youth policies worldwide.