Vulnerabilities and Resilience of Young People: Evidence from Young Lives India
Vulnerabilities and Resilience of Young People: Evidence from Young Lives India
17th November 2022
by Renu Singh and Protap Mukherjee
Young Lives Five Telephonic Surveys summarise the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on health seeking behaviour, COVID-19 tests and vaccinations, loss of livelihood, education, employment and mental health of young people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The first telephonic survey was undertaken during first lockdown (Jun-July 2020) and the last telephonic survey was conducted during Oct-Dec, 2021 with a total sample of 2,719 young people. Some of the important findings from five rounds of telephonic surveys are given below:
What was the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic? Findings From Five Rounds of Telephone Survey
Covid-10 related behaviour: While washing hands more often than before was reported by almost every respondent (96%), however only 2.4% of the YL sample were found to be ‘working from home’ in July 2020 which further reduced to 1.5% by Nov 2020.
One young person pointed out that:
“Corona virus is like any other virus … we have to be careful about it. We have to wear masks and use sanitizers.”
Covid-19 Tests and Vaccinations: Access to COVID-19 tests was reported by almost every respondent (99%) and 8% of them undertook testing suspecting COVID infection with more than half testing positive (59%).
By Oct-Dec 2021, more than three out of every five young person (65%) were vaccinated (at least one dose). Among those who were not vaccinated, the major reason reported was ‘worrying about side-effects’.
Education: The Enrolment rate reduced from 69% in Dec 2019 (pre-covid) to 55% in Oct-Dec 2021 with significantly higher rate of dropping out amongst girls. Half of the respondents perceived the quality of education to have dipped during the pandemic compared to the quality of education perceived pre-pandemic time.
Loss of Livelihood and Coping Strategies: During the first wave of the pandemic, 40% of households reported ‘loss of livelihood’. To cope up with livelihood loss, 63% of the respondents relied on savings, followed by receiving assistance from friends/families (23%). It is important to note that in June-July 2020, 15% of the respondents commented that their households ran out of food during the pandemic. The good news is that this percentage reduced to 1% by Oct-Dec 2021. According to one of the family members:
‘we didn’t have money to spend and eat. We took loans…. we have taken money on interest.’…. we had to struggle for daily food …we are accustomed to working in daily wage work…. due to that we had to consume food only once in a day.’
Nearly 35% of the 26-27 years old lost their livelihood during the lockdown in 2020 and by Aug-Oct 2020, 26-years old women were 65% less likely to be in regular salaried jobs compared to men of the same age.
Mental Health: During Aug-Oct 2020, 15% and 12% of the respondents aged 26 were found to demonstrating symptoms of anxiety and depression respectively which remained almost the same (13% anxiety and 12% depression) by Oct-Dec 2021.
- Enhance inter-sectoral convergence of schemes using a life-course approach in order to provide seamless services for the most disadvantaged populations.
- Improve supply chain management, transport infrastructure and climate change need to be addressed urgently through new techniques and technology for ensuring ‘Zero Hunger’.
- Support Female labour force participation by providing care services to women and build agency to take decisions related to marriage, fertility, career etc.
- Address the Digital Divide and provide mental health support. By ensuring services and digital access and mental health services are provided to the most disadvantaged families.
- Increase spending on research to find out ‘what works’ and develop evidence-based policies.
Tracing the consequences of child poverty - reflections from co-author Andrew Dawes on findings from 15 years of research
After several years in the making, ‘Tracing’, as we authors have come to call the volume, is published. What a journey it has been! Tracing draws on over 800 research papers, fact sheets, country reports and other outputs generated since the inception of the Young Lives study in 2001.
When asked by Jo Boyden to assist in this venture, I asked myself how on earth do we extract and synthesise Young Lives findings gathered over 16 years, to produce a concise account of the impact of poverty on children’s lives in four countries, that is at once scientifically rigorous, of interest to researchers in diverse fields, and perhaps most importantly, provides evidence that assists policy makers in their efforts to improve children’s lives?
Much of the answer lies in the deep knowledge of the project held by authors Jo Boyden and Paul Dornan who together with the Young Lives team, knew where to drill down to construct a powerful story of what matters in children’s lives both in relation to compounding disadvantage or supporting positive growth and development.
Both the Young Lives International Advisory Board and the ‘Tracing’ Advisory Group, or TAG as we called it, challenged us to go beyond the ‘business as usual’ child poverty story and mine for nuggets that would shift the policy and intervention discourse.
Taking this advice, we were able to demonstrate that while particular aspects of disadvantage are essential to address (e.g. under-nutrition; poor quality schooling), it is intersecting inequalities and disadvantages that are particularly powerful in undermining human development from before infancy through adolescence and youth. These include the poorest and rural children who are also members of marginalised groups (e.g. ethnic, caste or language), with less educated parents. Policies therefore need to pay particular attention to children who face these intersecting challenges.
A further example of the impact of intersecting disadvantage is evident from Latent Growth Modelling (LGM) an approach I discuss in an article here with Colin Tredoux. In Tracing, LGM traces the consequences of disadvantage in early and middle childhood and adolescence for the development of maths and language skills (vocabulary and reading comprehension). Modelling shows how children from poorer backgrounds with less educated caregivers either don't attend a preschool or attend one that is likely poor quality. That missed opportunity is associated with weaker quantitative and language skills by age five enduring through childhood.
A much-overlooked consequence of poverty is its potential impact on the psychological well-being of primary caregivers. LGM shows how the mental state of caregivers affected by poverty is related to child growth in the early years; those more negatively affected are likely to have children with stunted growth. That in turn compromises cognitive skills in both early and middle childhood. New challenges emerge in early adolescence for children who have to work to assist poor families - they have less time for schooling and studying. So a poor start compounded by other demands in later years contributes to poor skills development by adolescence. This in turn is likely to compromise education outcomes and ultimately the chance to enter further education, training and decent work.
Patterns such as this are evident throughout the Young Lives data and are what we refer to as Developmental Cascades, a term drawn from the work of Ann Masten and Dante Cicchetti As LGM shows, cascades occur both within and across stages of childhood development and build upon one another so that their effects accumulate to shape developmental outcomes over time.
For example, the study measured children’s height for their age at each Round. This enabled us to discover a very important nugget; evidence of both growth recovery and faltering during middle childhood. A proportion of children whose growth was stunted in early childhood showed normal growth in middle childhood, while some who had shown normal early growth, were stunted later. Thus early growth status is not necessarily fixed, indicating the potential for remedial intervention later in development. Particularly important is evidence that recovery is associated with cognitive gains in some children.
Another example comes from the qualitative data analysed by Gina Crivello and Ginny Morrow. The TAG encouraged us to seek examples of children who were ‘bucking the trend’ of expected negative outcomes despite their disadvantages. What was it about these children and their circumstances that made the difference, and how could this information be used to provide more enabling environments for children placed at risk by poverty? Gina and Ginny’s work, discussed here, found that it was a combination of mutually reinforcing factors such as child characteristics and enabling environments in the family and beyond which together diverted children at risk into positive pathways. They also found that to maintain this positive Development Cascade, the children needed sustained support through young adulthood.
In sum, Tracing has synthesized evidence from across the study and combined it with life course longitudinal analyses that permit examination of the cumulative influence of sources of risk, protection and opportunity from across childhood and through adolescence. This approach has allowed us to consider the implications of these findings for child-focused policy and programmes as low- and middle-income countries strive to overcome intergenerational poverty and inequality and meet the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals. We will share Tracing’s findings with policy makers and practitioners in government and non-government settings to help inform debates on how best to secure children’s well-being, development and rights.
Tracing the consequences of child poverty is available digitally https://bit.ly/2TUOQRY and in print https://bit.ly/2U8vjwz. For news of Young Lives you can follow us on Twitter @yloxford, Facebook, and check our website www.younglives.org.
Consequences of forced migration during early childhood on cognitive well-being in later childhood in Andhra Pradesh, India
This article published in the International Journal of Population Studies 2017, 3 (2) uses Young Lives data from India to explore the consequences of forced migration during early childhood on cognitive well-being in later childhood.
The authors' abstract reads:
Unlike its short-term impact on consumption and income, forced migration is expected to deliver a permanent shock to the overall well-being of households, specifically children in the stage of infancy. Studies on the effect of forced migration on child cognitive well-being are few in number. Therefore, the present study is intended to examine the consequences of forced migration during infancy on child cognition at later age. We hypothesized that the effect of forced migration on child cognitive well-being can be mitigated by social support. The study used longitudinal data from three waves of the Young Lives Study (YLS) conducted in 2002, 2006–2007, and 2009 in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. We used bivariate and multivariate regression models to analyze the consequences of forced migration in early childhood on the cognitive well-being in later childhood. The information on forced migration was collected in Wave 1 (at age 1), whereas the information on the cognitive well-being of the children was collected in Wave 3 (at age 8).
Child cognitive well-being was measured using scores obtained by the children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), math, Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), and memory tests. The results of the bivariate analysis show that the mean PPVT, math, EGRA, and memory scores obtained by children from the migrated households were lower than those obtained by children from the non-migrated households. Results of the multivariate linear regression models also show that children from the migrated households were statistically less likely to achieve higher scores on math (coefficient: -2.008, 95% C.I.-3.108, -0.908), EGRA (coefficient: -0.746, 95% C.I.-1.366, -0.126), and memory (coefficient: -0.503, 95% C.I. -0.834, -0.173) as compared to children from the non-migrated households.
Our findings also indicate that the effect of forced migration on child cognitive well-being was not mitigated by social support. Findings of this study conclude that forced migration during infancy has a significant effect on child cognitive well-being at later age. Therefore, interventions should be made, paying attention to the most vulnerable children who were displaced during critical development ages.
Commitment to early education in India
Last month, Galli Galli Sim Sim, the Hindi language adaptation of Sesame Street (known as Sesame Street Workshop in India, of which I am a board member) invited me to share my aspirations for early education reform. They asked what I would like to see prioritised, in response to which I identified an urgency to ‘make early education a justiciable right’.
It is time we recognised the immense importance of early years education as the foundation for all future learning. In India, change must be made in line with recommendations from the 2015 Law Commission Report, which states that the Right to Education Act should be made mandatory ‘with a view to prepare children above the age of three years for elementary education and to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years, the appropriate Government shall make necessary arrangement for providing free pre-school education for such children.’
But there are barriers to meeting this ask. While the State clearly outlines an ‘endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years’ (Article 22), the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), which came into effect from April 2010 failed to make education for children between three and six years of age a legal right.
I share this call for change in line with my role as Country Director of the Young Lives Study in India. Young Lives is a longitudinal study of childhood poverty that has conducted five survey rounds in India since 2002, gathering important evidence to add to the body of knowledge demonstrating that early years investment has long-term benefits, particularly for the most disadvantaged children.
Analysis of our data shows that pre-school variables (type of school, age of entry, and caregivers’ perception of schooling) have strong associations with the cognitive outcomes and subjective well-being of children at the age of 12. A recent paper highlighted that children who attended private pre-schools are more than twice as likely to finish secondary school than those children who did not attend pre-school.
When comparing the four study countries of Young Lives (Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam, and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India), we see that children across both cohorts (an Older Cohort born in 1994 and an Older Cohort born in 2001) who engaged in pre-school education performed better in numeracy tests at all ages regardless of the type of pre-school attended. Those who had attended pre-school also had higher levels of pride at eight years of age than those who did not. This is further corroborated by this year’s World Development Report which highlights that children who attend pre-school have higher attendance and better achievement in primary school.
The National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy recognises early childhood care and education as the foundation for all future learning and as a sorely neglected area. Given the importance of standardising quality across institutions catering to children between the ages of three and six years, it is time that a national policy was effectively implemented through a decentralised mechanism to ensure high standards across both the private and public sector.
The Global Education Monitoring Report stated that despite a global focus on early education thanks, in part, to Sustainable Development Goal target 4.2, only 69% of children globally participated in organised learning at the pre-primary level, ranging from 95% in Latin America and the Caribbean and in Europe and Northern America, to 42% in sub-Saharan Africa.
Given that a large number of children in India are growing up in disadvantaged contexts, which may inhibit them from developing to their full potential, early childhood education should be viewed as a key intervention to compensate for environmental deficits, so supporting and strengthening child development. The importance of early years education must be recognised in light of its long-term benefits, in line with recommendations made this January by the Central Advisory Board of Education Committee to extend the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE, 2009) to the under-six population.
To find out more about Young Lives’ education research, please follow @yloxford on Twitter with #YLEducation. You may also be interested in our involvement this week in the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society titled ‘Re-Mapping Global Education South-North Dialogue’. More details are available here.
Child undernutrition: opportunities beyond the first 1000 days
Stunting often begins in utero and increases, on average, for at least the first 2 years after birth. The first 1000 days between conception and a child's second birthday has been identified as the most crucial window of opportunity for interventions.1 Evidence suggests that stunting is largely irreversible after the first 1000 days, leading to an intergenerational cycle of poor growth and development, in which women who were stunted in childhood remain stunted as adults and tend to have stunted offspring. However, evidence indicates that accelerated linear growth in childhood and adolescence following stunting in infancy (ie, catch-up growth) can occur. Evidence from the Young Lives international cohort study in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, found that around 50% of children who were stunted at age 1 year showed improvements in height and were no longer stunted at age 8 years in the absence of an intervention. Other longitudinal observational studies have also reported catch-up growth in childhood. Read the full article at the Lancet's website...
One, two, three star! Pre-school attendance and numeracy skills development
The potential of quality early childhood care and education to transform childrens’ lives is now widely recognised in research, in policy and in service delivery. Most significantly at a global level, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.2 states that by 2030 countries should: ‘ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’.
In 2005, when the Young Lives younger cohort were in pre-school, Ethiopia’s pre-school system was still emerging and dominated by private kindergartens for urban families.
Conversely, India already had a long-standing public pre-school system, but perceived quality weaknesses contributed to an increasing growth in a largely unregulated private pre-school sector.
Similarly, Peru also had a public pre-school system, but with the complexity of two distinct types of pre-school of different quality (CEI and PRONOEI). It also had a significant private preschool sector for better-off families, often seen as an entry point into better quality private schools.
Finally, Vietnam had a well-established public pre-school education system, integrated within the school system, and generally accessible, except to the most disadvantaged and marginalized minority groups.
According to Young Lives data, in 2006 pre-school attendance was almost universal for our sample in Vietnam (91 percent), Peru (89 percent) and the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India (87 percent) but very limited in Ethiopia (25 percent), and most of those children attended private pre-schools. In all countries, pre-school attendance was more common in urban areas and among wealthier households. A forthcoming report by my colleagues and I commissioned by the World Bank, documents the relationship between pre-school attendance and numeracy skills development over time, as measured at the age of 5, 8 and 12. While causal relationship cannot convincingly be established within the confines of the report, we provide suggestive evidence on the positive role of preschool for skills development, particularly in Vietnam and in Ethiopia, respectively the country with the highest and the lowest pre-school enrolment.
Does household access to improved water and sanitation in infancy and childhood predict better vocabulary test performance ?
Objective
Test associations between household water and sanitation (W&S) and children's concurrent and subsequent Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores.
Primary outcome measures
PPVT scores at 5 and 8 years. Key exposure variables were related to W&S, and collected at 1, 5 and 8 years, including ‘improved’ water (eg, piped, public tap or standpipe) and ‘improved’ toilets (eg, collection, storage, treatment and recycling of human excreta).
Results
Access to improved water at 1 year was associated with higher language scores at 5 years (3/4 unadjusted associations) and 8 years (4/4 unadjusted associations). Ethiopian children with access to improved water at 1 year had test scores that were 0.26 SD (95% CI 0.17 to 0.36) higher at 5 years than children without access. Access to improved water at 5 years was associated with higher concurrent PPVT scores (in 3/4 unadjusted associations), but not later scores (in 1/4 unadjusted associations). 5-year-old Peruvian children with access to improved water had better concurrent performance on the PPVT (0.44 SD, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.59) than children without access to improved water. Toilet access at 1 year was also associated with better PPVT scores at 5 years (3/4 unadjusted associations) and sometimes associated with test results at 8 years (2/4 unadjusted associations). Toilet access at 5 years was associated with concurrent PPVT scores (3/4 unadjusted associations). More than half of all associations in unadjusted models (water and toilets) persisted in adjusted models, particularly for toilets in India, Peru and Vietnam.
Conclusions
Access to ‘improved’ water and toilets had independent associations with children's PPVT scores that often persisted with adjustment for covariates. Our findings suggest that effects of W&S may go beyond subacute and acute infections and physical growth to include children's language performance, a critical component of cognitive development.
Download Does household access to improved water and sanitation in infancy and childhood predict better vocabulary test performance in Ethiopian, Indian, Peruvian and Vietnamese cohort studies? Kirk A Dearden, Alana T Brennan, Jere R Behrman, Whitney Schott, Benjamin T Crookston, Debbie L Humphries, Mary E Penny, Lia C H Fernald
Comparison of the Effects of Government and Private Preschool Education on the Developmental Outcomes of Children: Evidence From Young Lives India
Over the past two decades the importance given to preschool education as laying the foundation for lifelong learning and development has been increasingly recognised. India’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2012–17) has conceptualised the pre-primary and early primary sub-stages from 4 to 8 years old as an ‘integrated early learning unit’, to ensure a sound foundation for every child. With the expansion of private preschools, particularly in urban areas, even the poorest families are opting for low-fee private schools rather than free government services offered through the anganwadis (preschool centres). While evidence from developed countries exists that preschooling can have long-term beneficial effects on children, longitudinal evidence in India regarding the association of preschool education with later developmental outcomes is scarce. In light of this, this working paper draws upon Young Lives panel data to explore whether children who attended private preschools demonstrate higher cognitive skills and enhanced subjective well-being at the age of 12, compared to those who attended government preschools.
Using linear and logistic regression models, as well as propensity score matching techniques, the analysis revealed that children who attended private preschools have significantly higher mathematics scores and more positive subjective well-being than children who attended government preschools. However, there is no significant association of private preschools with higher PPVT scores. Another important finding is that entering preschool after the age of 4, is shown to have a significant negative association with both cognitive achievement, as demonstrated by mathematics and PPVT scores, and affective domain, as measured by subjective well-being at the age of 12. The propensity score matching reveals that children who had private preschool education scored nearly 10 times and 13 per cent higher in mathematics scores and subjective well-being respectively at the age of 12 than children whose preschool education was provided by the government.
Given that the recently enacted National Policy on Early Childhood Care and Education recognises early childhood education as the foundation for all future learning and as a sorely neglected area, it is clear that policymakers must prioritise early childhood education, and quality within preschools be closely monitored, to ensure that the most disadvantaged children have access to high-quality preschool education programmes.
The Association Between Unintended Births and Poor Child Development in India: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study
Evidence on the association between unintended births and poor child development in developing countries is limited. The authors used data from three waves of the Young Lives study on childhood poverty conducted in Andhra Pradesh in 2002, 2006–07, and 2009 to examine the association between unintended births and poor child development in India.
Multivariable linear regression models were used to examine the association between unintended births and four indicators of child development—height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) score, Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) score, and Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) test score. The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique was also used to analyze data. Children who were reported as unintended at birth had significantly lower HAZ, PPVT, and EGRA scores compared with those who were reported as intended. PSM results support the findings from the multivariable linear regressions.
The findings provide evidence on the association between unintended births and poor child development in India. Future studies must take into account the unobserved heterogeneity that the study could not address fully.
The Association Between Unintended Births and Poor Child Development in India: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study.
Early Childhood Development in the SDGs
Agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals signals that early childhood development (ECD) will be a priority focus for the twenty-first century. Explicit mention is made in SDG Target 4.2 which states that by 2030 countries should: ‘ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’. But SDG commitments to ECD are much broader than this education-focused target. Strengthening early childhood development is key to achieving at least seven of the SDGs, on poverty, hunger, health (including child mortality), education, gender, water and sanitation and inequality.
The emphasis on ‘quality’ in Target 4.2 is crucial. The strongest evidence demonstrating the potential of ECD comes from well-planned and well-resourced programmes that:
- are ‘developmentally appropriate’ respecting children’s rights, needs, capacities, interests and ways of learning at each stage of their early lives;
- recognise the interdependencies between nutrition, health, care and education, from the ‘first 1000 days’ onwards;
- build on and support children’s key relationships, especially with their mother, father and wider family in the specific physical, social, cultural and language contexts that are the foundation for well-being.