Day-Care for Healthy Child Development and Wider Social and Economic Gain in Urban Areas in Low- and Middle Income Countries
Day-Care for Healthy Child Development and Wider Social and Economic Gain in Urban Areas in Low- and Middle Income Countries

Author: Helen Elsey

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2024-06-26

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 283255086X

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Rapid urbanization in low- and middle income countries (LMICs) has triggered a childcare crisis. As families move to the city, they leave behind extended family and traditional support networks; parents and guardians - particularly mothers - are working long hours outside the home often in informal and unstable jobs. In response to the increasing demand a range of informal, private and NGO providers have sprung up to provide day, and sometimes night, care. Governments are struggling to respond, and the care for children in the early years frequently falls between ministries. The combination of these factors in LMIC cities has left children from low-income families with substandard childcare which poses a threat to their immediate and long-term health and development.

No Small Matter
No Small Matter

Author: Harold Alderman

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0821386786

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"Education is often seen as a fundamental means to improve economic prospects for individuals from low income settings. However, even with increased emphasis on basic education for all, many individuals fail to achieve basic skills to succeed in life. The book presents evidence that one core reason is that by the time a child is old enough to attend school, there is already a wide disparity in cognitive skills and in emotional and behavioral development among children from households of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Low levels of cognitive development in early childhood strongly correlate with low socio-economic status (as measured by wealth and parental education) as well as malnutrition. These disadvantages are often exacerbated by economic crises. Fortunately, however, as documented in this volume, there are programs that have proven effective in promoting a child's development through caregiver-child interaction and stimulation, and with well designed preschool programs. While preschool programs currently cover a modest share of low income children, expansion of such services to at risk populations is a cost-effective means of improving overall educational achievement. Thus, focused preschool programs can serve as a key investment in a strategy to reduce the transmission of poverty from poor parents to their children."

Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Author: Marc H. Bornstein

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-09

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1000686507

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This compelling volume advances the understanding of what parenting and related sociodemographic, demographic, and environmental variables look like and how they are associated with child development in low- and middle-income countries around the world. Specifically, expert authors document how child growth, caregiving practices, discipline and violence, and children’s physical home environments, along with child and primary caregiver sociodemographic characteristics and household and national development demographic characteristics, are associated with central domains of early childhood development across a substantial fraction of the majority world using contemporary 21st-century data from the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and the UNICEF Early Childhood Development Index. The lives of nearly 160,000 girls and boys aged 3 to 5 years in nationally representative samples from 51 low- and middle-income countries are sampled to address 7 principal questions about children, caregiving, and contexts. Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries takes an authentically international approach to parenting, the environment, and child development in cultural contexts that more fully characterize the world’s diversity. Parenting and Child Development in Low- and Middle-Income Countries is essential reading for researchers and students of parenting, psychology, human development, family studies, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as governmental and non-governmental professionals working with families in low- and middle-income countries.

Overview: MELQO
Overview: MELQO

Author: UNESCO

Publisher: UNESCO Publishing

Published: 2017-08-14

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13: 9231002201

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The Measuring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) initiative began in 2014 as part of the global emphasis on early childhood development (ECD). Led by UNESCO, the World Bank, the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and UNICEF, the initiative aims to promote feasible, accurate and useful measurement of childrenâs development and learning at the start of primary school, and of the quality of their pre-primary learning environments. Items are designed for children between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Following the premise that many existing tools include similar items, the leading organizationsâ core team worked with a consortium of experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilaterals to build upon current measurement tools to create a common set of items organized into modules for measuring: 1) early childhood development and learning, and 2) the quality of pre-primary learning environments. The MELQO core team and experts also collaborated to outline a process for context-specific adaptation of the measurement modules resulting from lessons learned from field-testing in several countries in 2015 and 2016. The modules are designed to be implemented at scale, with an emphasis on feasibility for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). A key question addressed by MELQO was the balance between a global tool suitable for use everywhere, and local priorities and goals for childrenâs development. [Introduction, ed]

Cost-effective Public Daycare in a Low-income Economy Benefits Children and Mothers
Cost-effective Public Daycare in a Low-income Economy Benefits Children and Mothers

Author: Andrés Hojman

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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This paper evaluates the impacts of a public program that introduced access to part-time childcare centers for children younger than four years of age in poor urban areas in Nicaragua. We explore the effects of this program on several measures of children's and parental outcomes. Our identification strategy exploits the original randomization and the distance to the centers, using Instrumental Variables (IV) and Marginal Treatment Effects (MTE) methods to tackle imperfect compliance with the original treatment assignments. We present a theoretical model to rationalize our IV assumptions. We find a positive impact of 0.35 standard deviations on the personal-social domain of a widely used development test, and an impact of 14 percentage points on mothers' work participation. Our results are robust to different econometric specifications. We also find suggestive evidence that quality greatly matters for the impacts at the child level, but not at the mother level.

From Early Child Development to Human Development
From Early Child Development to Human Development

Author: Mary E. Young

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0821388932

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"It is never too early to become involved but it can easily be too late.'Armed with such alarming statistics as 125 million primary-school age children are not in school; another 150 million children drop out of primary school before they complete four years of education; and almost one-half of the children in the least developed countries of the world do not have access to primary education; the World Bank convened a global conference in April 2000, to address the benefits and challenges of investing in early childhood development. Scientific studies now show how critical the first few years of a child's life are in terms of later physical and mental health, behavior, and capacity to learn.The Millennium Development Goals endorsed by 189 member countries of the United Nations and the World Bank are targets for reducing global poverty. The goals specifically address the need for universal primary education as a means for breaking the cycle of poverty in individual families and in countries. With the publication of this volume, which contains the conference proceedings, the World Bank hopes to encourage a broader investment by countries, companies, organizations and private sector institutions in early child developmentArmed with such alarming statistics as 125 million primary-school age children are not in school; another 150 million children drop out of primary school before they complete four years of education; and almost one-half of the children in the least developed countries of the world do not have access to primary education; the World Bank convened a global conference in April 2000, to address the benefits and challenges of investing in early childhood development. Scientific studies now show how critical the first few years of a child's life are in terms of later physical and mental health, behavior, and capacity to learn.The Millennium Development Goals endorsed by 189 member countries of the United Nations and the World Bank are targets for reducing global poverty. The goals specifically address the need for universal primary education as a means for breaking the cycle of poverty in individual families and in countries. With the publication of this volume, which contains the conference proceedings, the World Bank hopes to encourage a broader investment by countries, companies, organizations and private sector institutions in early child development."