A launch of the Young Lives Round 3 survey data was hosted by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague on Monday 26 September 2011. The presentation, attended by Ministry staff, practitioners from Dutch NGOs, researchers and students, gave an overview of findings from Young Lives as it launches the data from its third round of household and child surveys.

A launch of the Young Lives Round 3 survey data was hosted by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague on Monday 26 September 2011. The presentation, attended by Ministry staff, practitioners from Dutch NGOs, researchers and students, gave an overview of findings from Young Lives as it launches the data from its third round of household and child surveys.

These preliminary results show that Young Lives data across a range of indicators can be combined to offer an overview of the mechanisms by which poverty persists – the perpetuation of gender gaps, the risk of entrenched inequalities in chronically poor communities – and the skill-formation process, linking nutrition, education and children’s psychosocial skills and well-being.

Professor Jo Boyden, Director of Young Lives, introduced the seminar with an overview of policy interventions to support children in developing countries. Professor Stefan Dercon followed with a presentation demonstrating how rapid economic growth is affecting children. These two overview presentations were complemented by case studies from Ethiopia, Vietnam and Young Lives education research.

The meeting was chaired by Bram van Ojik, Director, Social Development, Ministry of Social Affairs.

Lively presentations
Professor Jo Boyden, Director of Young Lives, introduced the seminar, giving an overview of the latest policy interventions to support children in developing countries. The first wave of measures, aimed at improving health, nutrition and access to water and sanitation have been extraordinarily successful at improving children’s chances of survival over the past 30 years. The second wave, which focused on education, has increased pre-school and primary enrolment (particularly since the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals), dramatically changing children’s aspirations. But the third wave of interventions, focused on child protection issues such as exploitation, homelessness and violence, is faltering – and specific challenges remain to the first and second wave.

At the same time, many developing country economies have become far more buoyant with the new Millennium. In common with many developing countries, all four Young Lives study countries have experienced rapid growth since 2000 – wealth and consumption levels are increasing, access to services has improved, there has been considerable progress in primary enrolment, and it could even be said that the nature of childhood is changing. But Young Lives is also finding that some households and children are repeatedly disadvantaged – ethnic minority children, rural households, and children whose parents themselves have low levels of education – are all doing less well across a series of indicators in education, health, and subjective well-being.

Professor Stefan Dercon, from the Department of International Development, University of Oxford, followed with a wide-ranging presentation demonstrating how rapid economic growth in the four study countries is affecting the lives of the Young Lives sample children and their households. Data from Young Lives shows how high levels of inequality and disadvantage persist – illustrated by worryingly high levels of stunting among the Young Lives children. The links between under-nutrition and cognitive development are widely documented and well understood and contribute to persistent disadvantage across generations. However, some catch-up growth has been documented in some Young Lives children by age 6, and we are seeing early evidence that this might also have potential benefits in improved cognitive outcomes.

Professor Dercon also explored the evidence around gender-based differences. While there are less clear patterns of gender bias than we might have expected across a range of measurements (nutrition, subjective well-being, and self-esteem), gaps are evident at all ages in education outcomes, especially at age 15, in Ethiopia, India and Vietnam and rural Peru. These gaps can be seen in aspirations: we observe differences in parental aspirations for boys and girls at age 8, translating into children’s own aspirations at age 12, and into gaps in learning test results at age 15.

These two overview presentations were complemented by case studies from Ethiopia, Vietnam and the Young Lives education research.

Tassew Woldehanna, Principal Investigator for Young Lives in Ethiopia, gave an overview of initial data the Round 3 survey in Ethiopia, demonstrating how, despite considerable economic growth, there are still many challenges around poverty reduction in Ethiopia. We find that there have been increases in family wealth, consumption levels and access to services, but that poor households are very vulnerable to shocks and adverse events such as price increases, drought or crop failure, and ill-health. Our qualitative case study work with children indicates how important a role they play in supporting family livelihoods, learning useful skills along the way. But we also see how, despite remarkable improvements in school coverage in Ethiopia, and rapid increases in enrolment, challenges remain for education policy, with only 18% of the 15-year-olds in our sample having completed primary school.

Thang Nguyen, Country Director of Young Lives Vietnam, presented research aimed at engaging with current policy debates in Vietnam. Vietnam has achieved remarkable poverty reduction since 1990 and reached lower middle-income status in 2009. Government attention is now concentrated on how to ensure that the country can continue this economic development and become a modern industrialised economy by 2020. For this a highly trained workforce is needed, and education policy is focusing in this area. However, as Young Lives data demonstrate, a small but significant group of children – children in rural areas, from ethnic minorities, or whose parents are themselves poorly educated – are persistently falling behind, and to break the trap of chronic poverty, government must focus on these children.

Finally, Caine Rolleston, Young Lives Education Research Officer, gave an overview of work being undertaken to collect information on the schools attended by Young Lives children, to augment the data already available on their household circumstances and learning outcomes. Research from all four countries demonstrates how differences in children’s achievement in school is linked to household, school and context factors, which in turn play out in differences in the opportunities open to children, relating to later poverty outcomes. The data shows how areas of residence, ethnicity and household wealth levels are key to children’s life changes, but that the mechanisms are varied and complex. Rapid growth in Vietnam may be accentuating these differences, potentially widening inequalities. And in India educational inequalities is driven by some of the same factors as Vietnam but may be catalysed by the rapid expansion of the private school sector, which has in particular led to increased differences between boys and girls.

Wide-ranging questions
The questions and discussions that followed the presentations covered a range of issues.

First, participants discussed the benefits of a multidimensional approach to childhood poverty to observe how many factors influence children’s nutrition, education, and psychosocial well-being and how these all interact with, and are influenced by, socioeconomic and structural factors. For this reason Young Lives tries to explore the inter-linkages and connections between these different domains – and the complexity of poverty and its impact on children – rather than to produce an index or single measure of childhood poverty.

Second, the benefits of child-focused research, in addition to household level data, were discussed. Young Lives was challenged to look at individual child trajectories and case studies as well as looking across the cohort.

Third, we discussed how Young Lives evidence can best be used to view government policy and programmes. While sub-studies have been carried out on various schemes (e.g. the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme in India, or Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia), the data can best be used to review the impact of programmes on children within our sample who are covered compared with those who are not, and changes that have taken place over time, rather than any attempt at an experimental approach including or excluding some of the study children.

Participants also stressed how it would be useful for research to be able to be used to help inform policy priorities on the sequencing of investment, for example in considering whether growth was needed to finance education, or education to sustain growth.

Presentations
Delivering Economic Growth for Children
Professor Jo Boyden (Director, Young Lives, University of Oxford)
 

Inclusive Growth: Learning from the evidence of the Young Lives studies
Professor Stefan Dercon (Department of International Development, University of Oxford)
Delivering on the Growth and Transformation Programme in Ethiopia
Tassew Woldehanna (Principal Investigator, Young Lives Ethiopia)

Education in the Context of Delivering Growth
Thang Nguyen (Country Director, Young Lives in Vietnam)

Education and the Poverty Cycle
Caine Rolleston (Education Research Officer, Young Lives)