Monitoring the well-being of children in Colombia

In this article, a synthetic index titled Index of Childhood Deficiencies (ICD) is constructed that offers an approach to verifying access to a set of goods, services and key conditions that affect the well-being of children positively and testify to the fulfillment of their rights as set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in the National Constitution. The ICD is the result of adding 14 partial indicators in 7 dimensions, utilizing the analysis of main components as a weighting methodology. Results indicated that, in the national context, the country's capital, Bogota, is the territorial unit with the best performance in offering living conditions for children. It was also found that childhood deficiencies are concentrated in departments located on the Pacific (Cauca, Choco, Narino) and Atlantic Coasts (The Guajira, Magdalena, Cordoba, Cesar, Sucre).