Santiago Cueto

Postinfancy growth, schooling, and cognitive achievement: Young Lives

Background: Early life growth failure and resulting cognitive deficits are often assumed to be very difficult to reverse after infancy. Objective: We used data from Young Lives, which is an observational cohort of 8062 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, to determine whether changes in growth after infancy are associated with schooling and cognitive achievement at age 8 y. Design: We represented the growth by height-for-age z score at 1 y [HAZ(1)] and height-for-age z score at 8 y that was not predicted by the HAZ(1). We also characterized growth as recovered (stunted at age 1 y and not at age 8 y), faltered (not stunted at age 1 y and stunted at age 8 y), persistently stunted (stunted at ages 1 and 8 y), or never stunted (not stunted at ages 1 and 8 y). Outcome measures were assessed at age 8 y. Results: The HAZ(1) was inversely associated with overage for grade and positively associated with mathematics achievement, reading comprehension, and receptive vocabulary. Unpredicted growth from 1 to 8 y of age was also inversely associated with overage for grade (OR range across countries: 0.80–0.84) and positively associated with mathematics achievement (effect-size range: 0.05–0.10), reading comprehension (0.02–0.10), and receptive vocabulary (0.04–0.08). Children who recovered in linear growth had better outcomes than did children who were persistently stunted but were not generally different from children who experienced growth faltering. Conclusions: Improvements in child growth after early faltering might have significant benefits on schooling and cognitive achievement. Hence, although early interventions remain critical, interventions to improve the nutrition of preprimary and early primary school–age children also merit consideration.

Breakfast prevents delays of attention and memory functions among nutritionally at-risk boys

Abstract This paper presents the results of an experiment with 54 elementary school boys in the highlands of Peru that assessed the main effects of breakfast consumption and nutritional status (either at-risk or not-at-risk) on six tests of cognition. The subjects spent two nights at a research center, one week apart, where they were randomly assigned to either a breakfast or a no-breakfast condition on the first morning and to the opposite treatment the second morning. The same test battery was administered at 11:00 am on both occasions. It consisted of three paper-and-pencil tests (Number Discrimination, Peabody Picture Vocabulary and Raven Progressive Matrices) and three computer tests (Stimulus Discrimination, Reaction Time and Sternberg Memory Search). Whereas fasting apparently had no negative effects on the no-risk group, it delayed stimulus discrimination and memory retrieval time among the nutritionally at-risk children. Glucose levels were not associated with test performance for either group under either treatment condition.

The relationship between socioeconomic status at age one, opportunities to learn and achievement in mathematics in fourth grade in Peru

Using Young Lives longitudinal data from Peru, this paper explores the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) measured at the age of one, opportunities to learn (OTL) and achievement in mathematics ten years later. Four variables of OTL were measured: hours of class per year, curriculum coverage, quality of teachers’ feedback, and level of cognitive demand. The last three were measured through an analysis of the exercises attempted by fourth grade students in their notebooks and workbooks. Multivariate analysis showed a robust association of one of the OTL variables (curriculum coverage, more specifically number of exercises attempted by students) with achievement in mathematics. Moreover SES at the age of one was significantly associated with this variable and with achievement by the time students were ten years old. Overall, the findings of the paper illustrate a highly unequal education system in which relatively poor children have fewer OTL in school.

Explaining and Overcoming Marginalization in Education: Ethnic and Language Minorities in Peru

In the past few decades, education in Peru has shown increased enrolment, especially in primary schools, but low achievement as measured by national and international standard tests in reading comprehension and mathematics. However, averages hide wide disparities in educational outcomes, which are often influenced by individual and family characteristics. Among these, coming from a family that speaks an indigenous language has been shown to be a significant predictor of low educational outcomes as compared to coming from a Spanish-speaking family (Cueto 2007: 425–6).2 In this chapter, we present and discuss evidence of this trend in Peru, suggesting policies to overcome existing inequalities.

Getting teachers back to the classroom. A systematic review on what works to improve teacher attendance in developing countries

This article reports on a systematic review of research on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at increasing teacher attendance in developing countries. After a comprehensive search process, nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Pooled effects sizes of included studies were estimated (with the exception of three studies that had unavailable information to calculate their effect sizes). Results show that direct interventions coupling monitoring systems with incentives and indirect interventions involving the community and parents in students’ education had statistically significant effects on teacher attendance, suggesting that close monitoring and attractive incentives are mechanisms of high potential to reduce teacher absenteeism.

More than poverty Pathways from economic inequality to reduced developmental potential

Studies from both high and low-middle income (LAMI) countries have documented how being reared in poverty is linked to compromised child development. Links between poverty and development are mediated by the timing and extent of exposure to both risk factors nested under poverty and to protective influences which can attenuate the impact of risk. While children from high-, middle-, and low-income countries are exposed to similar types of developmental risks, children from low- and middle-income countries are exposed to a greater number, more varied and more intense risks. Given these contextual differences, cumulative risk models may provide a better fit than mediated models for understanding the nature of pathways linking economic insufficiency and developmental inequality in low- and middle-income countries, and for designing interventions to promote development of children from these countries. New evidence from a large scale UNICEF data set illustrates the application of a cumulative risk/protective perspective in low- and middle-income countries.

Early Childhood Development: Wealth, the Nurturing Environment and Inequality First Results from the PRIDI Database

This paper presents findings from the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators, PRIDI for its acronym in Spanish. PRIDI created a new tool, the Engle Scale, for evaluating development in children aged 24 to 59 months in four domains: cognition, language and communication, socio-emotional and motor skills. It also captures and identifies factors associated with child development. The Engle Scale was applied in nationally representative samples in four Latin American countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru. The results presented here are descriptive, but they offer new insight regarding the complexity of child development in Latin America. The basic message emerging from this study is that child development in Latin America is unequal. Inequality in results appears as early as 24 months and increases with age. There is variation in inequality. For example, correlations with the socio-economic characteristics of the home and maternal education are stronger for cognition, and language and communication than for motor development. The environment within which children develop and the adult-child interactions predominant within this environment ? referred to in this study as the nurturing environment - is important for all domains of child development utilized in this study, although stronger associations appear for cognition, language and communication, and socio-emotional development. For all domains measured by the Engle Scale, the nurturing environment bears a statistically stronger correlation than the socio-economic endowment of the home or maternal education. Gaps between the development of children in the top and low extremes in these factors matter. By 59 months, the development of a poor and under-nurtured child will lag by as much as 18 months behind her richer and more nurtured peers. For this child it will be more difficult to recognize basic shapes like triangles or squares, count to 20, or understand temporal sequences. She will also have gaps in her basic executive functioning and socio-emotional skills, including empathy and autonomy. She will not likely be ready for school and may not have success once there. Notably, however, if this same child, in the same poor household, were to benefit from a nurturing environment, her level of development would rise and would start to approach levels found in children in richer but less nurtured households. The nurturing environment thus appears to mitigate the negative association lower levels of wealth have with the domains of development included in this study.

Does pre-school improve cognitive abilities among children with early-life stunting? A longitudinal study for Peru

Several studies in developing countries have found that children who experience growth faltering in the first years of life show lower cognitive abilities than their peers. In this study, we use the Young Lives longitudinal dataset in Peru to analyze if attending pre-school affects cognitive abilities at age five years, and if there is an interaction with HAZ at age one year. Using instrumental variables we found, for receptive vocabulary, a positive effect of attending Jardines (formal) pre-schools; the effect of attending PRONOEI (community-based) pre-schools was not significant. More years attending Jardines was more beneficial for children who were better nourished. We suggest working to improve the quality of PRONOEIs, and with teachers on targeting children of lower nutritional status.

Classroom composition and its association with students’ achievement and socioemotional characteristics in Peru

School composition is a topic that has gained increasing attention from researchers over the past few years, as it has been found that the socio-economic characteristics of students are associated with their achievement. However, most research has been cross-sectional and carried out in industrialised countries. In this study, we use parental education as a measure of classroom composition across schools in Peru, and find that there are high levels of segregation, especially at the extremes of the distribution. Using longitudinal data from the Young Lives Study, we find that classroom composition was positively associated with achievement in mathematics and sense of belonging of students, and not associated with reading achievement or perception of security at school. We discuss these results and suggest that school composition is a relevant variable to include in descriptions of national educational systems in Latin America and as a context variable for results of achievement among students.

Disparities in Children’s Vocabulary and Height in Relation to Household Wealth and Parental Schooling: A Longitudinal Study in Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Children from low socio-economic status (SES) households often demonstrate worse growth and developmental outcomes than wealthier children, in part because poor children face a broader range of risk factors. It is difficult to characterize the trajectories of SES disparities in low- and middle-income countries because longitudinal data are infrequently available. We analyze measures of children’s linear growth (height) at ages 1, 5, 8 and 12y and receptive language (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) at ages 5, 8 and 12y in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam in relation to household SES, measured by parental schooling or household assets. We calculate children’s percentile ranks within the distributions of height-for-age z-scores and of age- and language-standardized receptive vocabulary scores. We find that children in the top quartile of household SES are taller and have better language performance than children in the bottom quartile; differences in vocabulary scores between children with high and low SES are larger than differences in the height measure. For height, disparities in SES are present by age 1y and persist as children age. For vocabulary, SES disparities also emerge early in life, but patterns are not consistent across age; for example, SES disparities are constant over time in India, widen between 5 and 12y in Ethiopia, and narrow in this age range in Vietnam and Peru. Household characteristics (such as mother’s height, age, and ethnicity), and community fixed effects explain most of the disparities in height and around half of the disparities in vocabulary. We also find evidence that SES disparities in height and language development may not be fixed over time, suggesting opportunities for policy and programs to address these gaps early in life.