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This paper looks at patterns of growth faltering and catch up of around 1000 children as they moved from 8 to 19 years of age, from middle childhood through adolescence to young adulthood, using Height for Age Difference (HAD) and the more conventional Height for age z-scores (HAZ). It also looks at what individual and household characteristics may have moved these children into or out of situations of nutritional deprivation and how their stunting profile in later childhood correlates with psychosocial outcomes at age 19 and how it may have intergenerational consequences. The paper uses 4 rounds of longitudinal data collected in 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2013 from Andhra Pradesh and Telengana, India when the children were aged 8, 12, 15 and 19. The paper finds that there are significant gender based biases in growth faltering later in childhood disfavouring girls and that becoming newly stunted as an adolescent is strongly correlated with a child reporting to have poorer relationships with peers compared to the group that were never stunted. We also find that a girl experiencing stunting in middle childhood or adolescence (even if they were not stunted at age 8 or eventually moved out of being stunted by age 19) correlates significantly with offspring being shorter and thinner than the offspring of girls never stunted. This is one of few, if any, studies that look at growth patterns in middle childhood and adolescence and outcomes as a young adult and the results are important for their implications for further research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper uses UNICEF’s Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys cross-country data to shed light on unequal investments in the wellbeing of children (boys and girls) within the household. The paper proposes a new methodology to measure the extent of gender intrahousehold inequality and its contribution to overall levels of inequality using an L-Theil index decomposition. The individual and joint distribution of inequality in four key indicators of child wellbeing is analyzed: stunting, birth registration, school attendance, and time spent on work and chores (working hours) in the search for evidence of gender bias. Evidence from various separate county studies had shown that the direction of the gender bias is not universal. Such conclusion holds when using a consistent methodology and comparable cross-country datasets; this paper shows that disparities inside households do not follow the same bias toward one or the other gender in all countries and the direction of the bias is not the same across indicators of wellbeing. While progress in improving child wellbeing has occurred in many countries, inequalities remain. Intrahousehold inequalities might still be considered a priority in an agenda focused on closing these progress gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal school enrolment of children aged 6–14 years has been a commitment enshrined in the Indian constitution since 1950. To attain this goal, the central government has set up a range of programs, such as incentive programs, teacher grants and infrastructure grants, while state governments share responsibility in implementing those educational policy initiatives. This paper reviews the progress of India’s primary schools over the period 2005–2011 as public educational undertaking shifted more from the centre to the states. Using two waves of the Indian Human Development Survey conducted in 2005 and 2011, we track the progress of primary schools in terms of infrastructure upgrade, teachers’ quality, the costs of education, enrolment and learning outcomes. We find that while progress has been made in terms of infrastructure provision and enrolment, other aspects have either seen no progress or have worsened over time, and numerical and reading skills of children 8–11 years old worsening over time. Better performing states are generally in the South and in the extreme North. However, in terms of learning outcomes, the abysmal results are nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Son preference is widespread in a number of developing countries despite substantial improvements in education levels and economic development. One potential explanation for the persistence of this phenomenon is that individual household members like the mother derive large non-monetary benefits from giving birth to a son and therefore prefer boys to girls. Qualitative evidence suggests that such benefits exist and may depend on the child’s age. This paper uses large nationally representative datasets from India and tests whether having a son leads to higher decision-making powers for mothers than having a daughter. Since the number and gender composition of children is likely to be non-random for families that want a son, I focus on first-born children for whom the sex ratio of girls relative to boys is normal. The main analysis also focuses on young children of up to six months, which gives parents little time to adjust desired birth-spacing intervals that could be systematically correlated with decision-making powers and child gender. The results show little evidence of consistently large female benefits shortly after birth, and any positive impacts of having a son disappear after the first six months. There are also no large benefits for adult sons. These empirical patterns do not support qualitative evidence suggesting that women benefit from the birth of a son through larger decision-making powers in the household because of increased respect by other household members. The benefits also do not heavily depend on the child’s age, which is not consistent with a channel predicting a better bargaining position for women with adult sons who start taking over the running of the household. Overall, these results extend our understanding of individual-specific incentives for son preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary In 1988, Peru entered a severe economic crisis as a corollary of unfavorable external economic conditions, high levels of debt, and heterodox policies (the so-called debt crisis of 1980s). This paper investigates the short-term health shock experienced by infants during the crisis and its long-term impact on human capital accumulation. Because no longitudinal data are available, the estimation of causal effects is performed using multiple cross-section surveys that are representative of the same population over time. The short-term and the long-term effects are estimated exploiting the heterogeneous impact of the crisis across and within birth cohorts. Results indicate that the Peruvian crisis significantly affected the health of infants, particularly that of children born to low-educated mothers. From 1988 to 1990 vaccination declined 12 percentage points and infant mortality increased 2.3 percentage points among children born to low-educated mothers. In the long run, the children who suffered the most severe health shocks during the economic downturn of the 1980s performed worse in school. They had 0.12 fewer years of formal education and their probability of completing primary education by age 15 was three percentage points lower in relation to similar children born after the crisis. The results have strong policy implications. Children in developing countries should be safeguarded against health shocks during economic crises to avoid a decline in the accumulation of human capital in the long-run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme improves child health on average. • However, four out of the ten regions did not see significant benefits from the scheme. • Benefits are concentrated in lower-income households in regions with a high quality of care. • Further evidence points to the importance of health care utilization to explain these results. This paper assesses whether health insurance is successful in improving health. More specifically, it investigates whether a same health insurance scheme has differentiated impacts on children depending on the way it is implemented and on the characteristics of the beneficiaries. To do so, I analyze the case of Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme that provides free coverage for children and has decentralized operations. I exploit the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey of 2011 and I use propensity score matching to account for selection in the scheme. The study finds that, even though the NHIS is successful in improving health outcomes among insured children in Ghana, gains are not shared equally across regions. To understand this regional heterogeneity, mechanisms are investigated. The positive impact of health insurance is concentrated among the lower-income households in regions with a high quality of public health care. Further evidence points to the importance of health care utilization to explain these results. This paper sheds a new light on the mixed results of the literature on the impact of health insurance on health outcomes. It provides an understanding of the sources of the heterogeneous impact of a National Health Insurance Scheme and highlights the importance of context and implementation as drivers of its effectiveness. Such evidence is relevant for both the evaluation and monitoring of existing health care schemes and for the implementation of new large-scale public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates the relationship between health outcomes at birth and fetal exposure to temperature shocks in rural Colombia during 1999–2008. We overcome a limitation of previous studies, confined by small samples and restricted areas, by using records on nearly 1.5 million births. We exploit variations in exposure to temperature shocks by municipality and by year and month of conception in a fixed effects model. We find that exposure to moderate heat waves during the third trimester of pregnancy reduces the birthweight of the infant by about 4.1 g. Furthermore, exposure to moderate cold shocks during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy reduces the length at birth by 0.014–0.018 cm. We also find evidence of the negative effects of heat weaves in Apgar tests at a magnitude of −0.2 to −0.6 percentage points of the normal Apgar score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New data show policy convergence among 15 ex-Soviet states in childcare deinstitutionalization. • Countries adopted policies as 'a package' (goals + instruments), as promoted by international actors. • Authoritarian states adopted the same policy instruments, as non-authoritarian states. • Authoritarian states adopted 'modern', non-coercive policy instruments, based on the agentic individual. • World culture and international advocacy appear key to childcare policy instrument choice. Do authoritarian states differ from non-authoritarian ones in their social policy choices? The paper presents new data on childcare deinstitutionalization policies in 15 ex-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The data suggest significant convergence among countries in the adoption of both deinstitutionalization policy 'ends' and 'means', despite drastic differences in political regimes. In particular, I trace the adoption of several instruments, which have been actively promoted by international organizations (e.g., foster care, case management, downsizing of institutions, etc.). The data suggest that authoritarian states in the ex-Soviet region do not differ from non-authoritarian governments in their deinstitutionalization instrument choices, suggesting that political regime is not always a major policy determinant. The results are significant because they show that authoritarian regimes can also select modern, non-coercive instruments for childcare deinstitutionalization, which are underpinned by the idea of agentic actors and the centrality of the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper studies the relationship between mothers’ employment and children’s schooling in India. Using the second National Family Health Survey, the results of a multilevel probit model show that the correlation between mothers’ employment and their children’s schooling is negative. Women in poorer households are more likely to work but, given the negative correlation, their additional income does not seem sufficient to enable children’s school attendance. A sensitivity analysis on wealth deciles shows that this negative relationship disappears in urban areas and becomes weaker in rural areas at the top wealth deciles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines how women’s perception of the division of household assets upon divorce affects women’s well-being and child schooling outcomes in rural Ethiopia. Findings suggest that women who perceive that their husband would get all the assets in case of a divorce also tend to perceive less control over their lives. Implications of perceptions of unequal divorce allocations on child schooling are more striking: not only do children in households where perceived divorce allocations favor the husband do worse compared to children of the same age, but girls fare even worse than boys in these households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: An estimated 30–70% of Nairobi’s population lives in informal settlements with very poor access to basic services, yet children are notably absent from the informal settlements. This paper combines qualitative research with three micro data sets and finds that the presence of urban basic services is importantly linked to child residence of migrant parents. This finding is critical for policy debates on slum improvements. It predicts that improvements in services need to be accompanied by appropriate social and educational improvements servicing children and supports recent calls for a more multi-sectoral, participatory, and child-centered approach to urban informal planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines the health status of Chinese ethnic minorities using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data collected during 1989–2006. We found negative and significant differences between minority and Han Chinese in a set of anthropometric measures for people of all age groups. OLS and province fixed-effects regressions suggest that the economic development level of the province of residence is a major factor contributing to the gap. Oaxaca decompositions further reveal that the observed health gap is mainly due to inequalities in endowments rather than inequalities in their effects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Divorce does not negatively affect the educational outcomes of children who were young when their parents divorced. • Children who were 5 or younger when their parents divorced are more likely to have attended primary school than their older siblings. • This higher investment is not sustained for long: these children are as likely as their older siblings to have completed primary school. • Children who were between 6 and 9 years old when their parents divorced are as likely to have completed primary school as their older siblings. • Young children may benefit from an improvement of the financial situation or an increase in the decision-making power of mothers after the divorce. This paper provides new evidence on the consequences of parental divorce for children in Africa. Using survey data that collected the detailed life histories of Senegalese women and of their children, we investigate how children's educational outcomes are affected by their parents' divorce. We use a sibling fixed-effects strategy that allows us to control for all the factors that are common to all children in a family, such as parental preferences regarding education or the level of education of the parents, alleviating concerns of omitted variable bias. We compare children who were old enough to have been enrolled in primary school at the time of the divorce to their younger siblings, for whom enrollment decisions had not yet been made at the time of the divorce. We find that younger siblings were more likely than their older siblings to have attended primary school. This higher level of investment does not persist in the long run: there are no differences between siblings when considering primary school completion. We find that custody and fostering decisions do not seem to mediate the positive effects on school attendance. Our findings are consistent with either an improvement of the financial situation (due to remarriage) or an increase in the decision-making power of mothers after the divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• First national study to assess the impact of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) on children's cognitive scores. • We find that receiving ICDS intervention in early childhood benefits children's cognitive development at later ages. • ICDS is positively associated with reading and arithmetic test scores for girls. • ICDS is also positively associated with reading and arithmetic test scores of children from low-income families. • We argue that ICDS plays a critical role in bridging the gaps in cognitive achievement in India. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme aims to provide food supplementation, immunization, health check-ups, and early childhood education to children under the age of six years. There is mounting evidence that links poverty, undernutrition, and lack of stimulation at early ages with cognitive and economic disadvantages later in life. Furthermore, early childhood nutritional, educational, and health interventions are associated with human capital gains in developing countries. In this paper, we investigate the medium-term impact of ICDS services received in early childhood on subsequent reading and arithmetic achievement among children in the ages of eight to 11 in India. There are no nationwide studies that investigate the impact of ICDS on cognitive outcomes. Utilizing data from the two waves of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) and applying propensity score matching, we find that ICDS has a positive impact on cognitive achievement, primarily for girls and children in low-income families. Since the influence of ICDS intervention is observed for these groups, we believe that the ICDS plays a critical role in reducing gender and income-related gaps in cognitive achievement in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]