Child Development and Economic Development: Lessons and Future Challenges

This document poses the problem of economic growth not yet improving lives of children in developing countries that are seeing improved economic indicators. The authors advocate for effective child-focused policies that recognise children as social actors and discuss an agenda for government action. It is based on evidence from the Young Lives international study of childhood poverty, involving 12,000 children in 4 countries over 15 years. Young Lives is led by a team in the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, in association with research and policy partners in the 4 study countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam.

The first section describes what is known about children’s development, including the impact of risk exposure of young children and the relationship between child development and economic development. For example, children’s survival and development are time-sensitive, e.g., there is an early need for adequate nutrition for positive cognitive outcomes and non-cognitive social and emotional outcomes such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, and educational aspirations in later life. "The availability of formal and informal mechanisms of support, including health, education and social protection services, is part of this environment of child development....In all four Young Lives countries, the same kinds of boys and girls tend to be repeatedly disadvantaged: rural children, children of ethno-linguistic minority communities and those whose mothers have no or low education."

The challenges in how economic growth affects child well being include:

• The economically poorest households may be part of stigmatised ethnic groups - "Disparities in service access and quality have the potential to undermine children’s well-being and skill formation."
• Gender bias in education has shown improvement in public education, but boys are still more likely to be funded for private educational opportunities.

"Effective policies for child well-being need to address inequalities and disparities. Formulating them requires a careful understanding not just of inequalities, but also of the mechanisms by which they are perpetuated, and the ways in which these mechanisms themselves may be changing over time."

The document discusses an agenda for government action on child well-being including designing policies for child development. It is based upon stronger political commitments to support child survival and development. "In summary, developing effective child-focused policies requires adequate infrastructure and funding, and good technical design. More than this, however, it demands:

• understanding the mechanisms through which biases and exclusion are perpetuated for particular groups, and the ways that these mechanisms change over time.
• more pro-poor growth, concentrating on broad socio-economic development at the same time as investing in disadvantaged groups.
• recognising the links between sector areas so that all aspects of children’s well-being and development can be provided for effectively.
• widening existing successful social protection policies so that they reach poorer populations more effectively.
• Investment in governance, effective accountability mechanisms and human resources in public institutions to tackle the challenges of ...corruption and the quality of public service workers.
• attention to balancing the political and fiscal dimensions of sustaining current services.
• taking the realities of children’s lives into account in programme design to ensure that services are appropriate, valued and reach those with most need."