• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.58
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• pp.171-203
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• 2017

There has been a growing number of research about children's development indicators and child well-being indicators. After the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and concluding observations on the second report of Korea, the effort to monitor and measure children's rights and the use of child rights indicators has increased within policy and academic research. However, few indicators provide a realization of children's rights. The purpose of this paper was to analyze children's own perceptions of their rights and to develop a children's rights index to measure children's rights. In this study, a children's rights index was developed from 38 indicators categorized into nine components and four domains (survival rights, development rights, protection rights, and participation rights) to measure children's rights. Data were gathered from 17,000 elementary and middle school children and their parents in 16 cities. The survey revealed significant differences in the children's rights index by region and age group. There was also a correlation between the economic circumstances of both households and communities and the children's rights index. In the light of the findings, it is suggested that there is a need to increase public investment on children and to raise awareness of children's rights in order to improve children's rights and to decrease disparity.