Societal development is related to aspirations, which are specific to each culture. Societal goals and aspirations are only partially reflected in national policies, and change with time and across countries as a consequence of the diverse interactions that take place in each territorial context. Children’s aspirations at the population or national level are usually ignored when analysing societal development due to there being a scarcity of large-scale or representative samples of children’s self-reported information in any country. In order to illustrate cultural diversity and how cultural sensitivity is needed to understand the cross-cultural heterogeneity and diversity of children’s lives and aspirations, the 10 and 12-year-old age groups from Waves 1 and 2 of the Children’ Worlds international research project databases have been used. Here we present data provided by children from 22 countries. Different cultural profiles have been identified that influence the intensity of children’s aspirations, and different aspirational profiles have been shown to have different effects on subjective well-being by country. The results show that survey methodology can be used to measure children’s aspirations at the population level and suggest one of the potential procedures for identifying the development goals pursued by children. Data provided by children could be taken as indicators of social change, progress or development – adding them to alternative indexes to the most frequently used development indexes at present—based on economic or health data only. Keeping children statistically invisible hides crucial domains from the public debate on human development goals.

社会发展与各种文化的愿望有关。社会目标和愿望仅部分反映在国家政策中，并且由于在每个领土范围内发生的不同互动，会随着时间和国家而变化。由于在任何国家都缺乏大规模或具有代表性的儿童自我报告信息样本，因此在分析社会发展时通常会忽略儿童在人口或国家层面的愿望。为了说明文化多样性以及如何需要文化敏感性来理解儿童生活和愿望的跨文化异质性和多样性，儿童世界国际研究项目第 1 波和第 2 波中的 10 和 12 岁年龄组已使用数据库。在这里，我们展示了来自 22 个国家/地区的儿童提供的数据。已经确定了影响儿童愿望强度的不同文化特征，并且不同的愿望特征已被证明对不同国家的主观幸福感有不同的影响。结果表明，调查方法可用于在人口层面衡量儿童的愿望，并提出确定儿童追求的发展目标的潜在程序之一。儿童提供的数据可以作为社会变化、进步或发展的指标——将它们添加到目前最常用的发展指数的替代指数中——仅基于经济或健康数据。让儿童在统计上不可见会隐藏关于人类发展目标的公开辩论的关键领域。