A Methodological Test of Jarosz and Mather’s Young Women’s Well-Being Index

• In Event: 2429 - Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Roundtable 10

Abstract

Jarosz and Mather (2017) constructed a Young Women’s Well-Being Index based on 14 social indicators. Comparing index values for young women of the World War II, Baby Boom, X, and Millennial generations, they concluded that the well-being of Baby Boom young women was substantially better than that of WWII young women but that both the Generation X and Millennial young women experienced little or no improvement in well-being relative to the generation of young women that preceded them. This paper examined how sensitive those conclusions are to modifications in the construction of the index—namely, omitting 1 or 2 of the 14 indicators that compose the index, giving 1 or 2 of the indicators greater weight in the overall index, or using a different method of standardizing the indicators to a common metric. The index proved to be quite robust. No matter the modification, improvement in well-being experienced by the Baby Boom young women always exceeds improvement experienced by the Generation X and Millennial young women and usually by a substantial amount. No matter the modification, the Millennial young women experience little or no improvement in well-being relative to Generation X. Only in gauging the progress made by Generation X young women do index variations sometimes matter. While most index variations confirm Generation X young women making at best only modest improvement in well-being, a minority of variations in index construction would have indicated considerable progress made by Generation X young women but in no case greater progress than that made by the Baby Boom generation young women. Overall conclusion: The Young Women’s Well-Being Index and its conclusions stand up very well to modifications in the construction of the index.

Author

• Robert F. Szafran, Stephen F. Austin State University