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Peruvian households have experienced one of the most prevalent economic shocks due to COVID-19, significantly increasing their vulnerability to food insecurity (FI). To understand the vulnerability characteristics of these households among the Peruvian young population, including the role of the government’s response through emergency cash transfer, we analysed longitudinal data from the Young Lives study (n = 2026), a study that follows the livelihoods of two birth cohorts currently aged 18 to 27 years old. FI was assessed using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Household characteristics were collected before and during the COVID-19 outbreak in Peru to characterise participants’ vulnerability to FI. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the association between government support and participants’ vulnerability characteristics to FI. During the period under study (March to December 2020), 24% (95% CI: 22.1–25.9%) of the participants experienced FI. Families in the top wealth tercile were 49% less likely to experience FI. Larger families (&gt, 5 members) and those with increased household expenses and decreased income due to COVID-19 were more likely to experience FI (by 35%, 39% and 42%, respectively). There was no significant association between government support and FI (p = 0.768). We conclude that pre-pandemic socioeconomic status, family size, and the economic disruption during COVID-19 contribute to the risk of FI among the Peruvian young population, while government support insufficiently curtailed the risk to these households.

We quantify the increase in physical domestic violence (family or intimate partner violence) experienced by young people aged 18–26 during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns in Peru. To do this we use an indirect methodology, the double list randomization experiment. The list experiment was embedded in a telephone survey to participants of the Young Lives study, a long-standing cohort survey. We find that 8.3% of the sample experienced an increase in physical violence within their households during the lockdown period. Those who had already reported experiencing domestic violence in the last round of (in-person) data collection in 2016 are more likely to have experienced increased physical violence during the COVID-19 lockdown, with 23.6% reporting an increase during this time. The reported increase in violence does not differ significantly by gender. List experiments, if carefully conducted, may be a relatively cheap and feasible way to elicit information about sensitive issues during a phone survey., Highlights • We use an indirect method to assess increase in violence during COVID-19 lockdowns. • We embedded a List Experiment in a phone survey of young people in Peru. • 8.3% of the sample experienced an increase in physical violence during the lockdown. • 22.5% of those who had already experienced violence said this had increased. • We found no significant difference between male and female responses.

ObjectiveTo provide evidence on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of young people who grew up in poverty in low/middle-income countries (LMICs).DesignA phone survey administered between August and October 2020 to participants of a population-based longitudinal cohort study established in 2002 comprising two cohorts born in 1994–1995 and 2001–2002 in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Peru and Vietnam. We use logistic regressions to examine associations between mental health and pandemic-related stressors, structural factors (gender, age), and lifelong protective/risk factors (parent and peer relationship, wealth, long-term health problems, past emotional problems, subjective well-being) measured at younger ages.SettingA geographically diverse, poverty-focused sample, also reaching those without mobile phones or internet access.Participants10 496 individuals were approached; 9730 participated. Overall, 8988 individuals were included in this study; 4610 (51%) men and 4378 (49%) women. Non-inclusion was due to non-location or missing data.Main outcome measuresSymptoms consistent with at least mild anxiety or depression were measured by Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (≥5) or Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (≥5).ResultsRates of symptoms of at least mild anxiety (depression) were highest in Peru at 41% (32%) (95% CI 38.63% to 43.12%; (29.49–33.74)), and lowest in Vietnam at 9% (9%) (95% CI 8.16% to 10.58%; (8.33–10.77)), mirroring COVID-19 mortality rates. Women were most affected in all countries except Ethiopia. Pandemic-related stressors such as health risks/expenses, economic adversity, food insecurity, and educational or employment disruption were risk factors for anxiety and depression, though showed varying levels of importance across countries. Prior parent/peer relationships were protective factors, while long-term health or emotional problems were risk factors.ConclusionPandemic-related health, economic and social stress present significant risks to the mental health of young people in LMICs where mental health support is limited, but urgently needed to prevent long-term consequences.

ObjectiveTo provide evidence on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of adolescents and young adults who grew up in poverty in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).DesignA phone survey implemented August-October 2020 to participants of a population-based cohort study since 2002 comprising two cohorts born in 1994-5 and 2001-2 in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Peru and Vietnam. We examined associations between mental health and pandemic-related stressors, as well as structural factors (gender, location, wealth); and lifelong protective/risk factors (parent and peer relationship, past household wealth, long-term health problems, past emotional problems and subjective well-being) measured at younger ages.SettingA diverse, poverty focused sample, reaching those without mobile phones or internet access.Participants10,496 individuals were approached, 9,730 participated. Overall, 8,988 individuals were included in this study, 4,610 (51%) male and 4,378 (49%) female. Non-inclusion was due to non-location or missing data.Main outcome measuresAt least mild anxiety and depression were measured by Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7, ≥5) and Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8, ≥5).ResultsRates of symptoms of at least mild anxiety (depression) were highest in Peru at 41% (32%) [95% CI, 38.63-43.12; (29.49-33.74)], and lowest in Vietnam at 9% (9%) [95% CI, 8.16-10.58; (8.33-10.77)], mirroring COVID-19 mortality rates. Females were most affected in all countries but Ethiopia. In all countries, pandemic-related stressors were associated with increased rates of anxiety and depression, though with varying levels of importance across countries. Prior parent and peer relationships were protective factors for mental health while having a long-term health problem or prior emotional problems were risk factors.ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic presents significant risks to the mental health of young people. Mental health support is limited in LMICs and young people have to date been lower priority for COVID-19 interventions.Strengths and limitations of this studyThe study uses data from adolescents and young adults who grew up in poverty in four LMICs which were diversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore investigating a globally vulnerable, but understudied group both in terms of age and wealth.This study reaches a broad sample of young people who grew up in poverty, including those without internet or mobile phone access.A key strength is combining a broad range of pandemic-related stressors from survey data on experiences of COVID-19 with previously measured information on longer-term risk and protective factors, therefore contributing to a more complete picture of COVID-19 effects.A limitation of the study is that it does not have a directly comparable pre-COVID baseline for depression/anxiety, however, proxy variables are used as a baseline and the explanatory variables capture dynamics that happened during the pandemic.A further limitation is possible underreporting due to stigma associated with mental health, despite piloting and validation, as well as possible bias in self-reported experiences of pandemic-related stressors due to feelings of anxiety or depression.

Whether allocating more resources improves learning outcomes for students in low-performing public schools remains an open debate. We focus on the effect of increased instructional time, which is theoretically ambiguous due to possible compensating changes in effort by students, teachers or parents. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that a reform extending the school day increases math test scores, with a large effect size relative to other interventions. It also improved reading, technical skills and socio-emotional competencies. Our results are partly explained by reductions in home production by students, specialization by teachers and investments in pedagogical assistance to teachers.

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In this paper, we draw on recent experiences from the Young Lives study to discuss some of the ethical and practical challenges facing longitudinal cohort studies in low- and middle-income countries in the time of coronavirus. We argue that COVID-19 has instigated an ‘ethics of disruption’ for social researchers across the world, and for longitudinal cohort studies like Young Lives, this requires navigating three core considerations: first, managing research relationships and reciprocity within an observational study design; second, maintaining methodological continuity and consistency across time; and third, balancing an immediate short-term response to COVID-19 against the longer-term perspective. We refer to the study’s plan to implement a new COVID-19 phone survey to illustrate how the team are navigating this altered ethical terrain.

Skills are an important predictor of labour, education, and wellbeing outcomes. Understanding the origins of skills formation is important for reducing future inequalities. This paper analyses the effect of shocks in-utero on human capital outcomes in childhood and adolescence in India. Combining historical rainfall data and longitudinal data from Young Lives, we estimate the effect of rainfall shocks in-utero on cognitive and non-cognitive skills development over the first 15 years of life. We find negative effects of rainfall shocks on receptive vocabulary at age 5, and on mathematics and non-cognitive skills at age 15. The negative effects on cognitive skills are driven by boys, while the effect for both cognitive and non-cognitive skills are driven by children of parents with lower education, suggesting that prenatal shocks might exacerbate pre-existing inequalities. Our findings support the implementation of policies aiming at reducing inequalities at very early stages in life.

This paper draws on the results of telephone surveys conducted to assess the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the young people of two longitudinal cohorts (aged 19 and 26 years old at the time) of the four countries that participate in the Young Lives research programme: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. We first review the pandemic experiences of these four countries, which differed significantly, and report on the responses of the individual young people to the pandemic and the measures taken by governments. Our main focus is on how the pandemic and policy responses impacted on the education, work and food security experiences of the young people. Unsurprisingly the results show significant adverse effects in each of these areas, though again with differences by country. The effects are mostly more severe for poorer individuals. We stress the challenges that COVID-19 is creating for meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, in particular in making it more difficult to ensure that no one is left behind.

A large literature stemming from the Fetal Origins Hypothesis (Barker, 1990) discuss the importance on the in-utero period as critical in shaping a person?s future development. More recently, economists have further tested this theory by investigating how fetal experiences are related to a variety of future economic outcomes. This paper investigates the effect of in utero exposure to rainfall shocks in India on future accumulation of human capital. For this analysis, we match the Young Lives data, following a cohort of children born between the years 2000 and 2001 up to age 15, and climate data from the University of Delaware. We estimate the impact of in utero exposure to rainfall shocks on children?s cognitive (mathematics and vocabulary) and non-cognitive skills (core self-evaluation) at age 15 by using a community fixed effects model to control for any unobservable correlates of weather patterns and local levels of human capital formation. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of rainfall deviations that occur during the first, second and/or third trimesters of pregnancy. We argue that timing of the exposure to shocks might be important to cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation considering that the critical window for the fetus? brain development is between the 24th and 42nd week of gestation. Our results show significant and negative effects of exposure to anomalous rainfall deviations from the historical mean on children?s cognitive scores at age 15, particularly when affected by a negative one standard deviation shock. We also find a significant and negative impact on children?s core self-evaluation from a two standard deviation shock. The second trimester appears to be the critical window of exposure on cognitive outcomes, while the first trimester seems to be important to the non-cognitive outcome. Hence, our results point to the persistent effects of exposure to rainfall deviations during pregnancy on future human capital development. This highlights the need for policies to think more about individual life-course and intergenerational mobility, where focusing on mothers can help children?s development outcomes in the future.

Using data from the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives study, this paper investigates the association between maternal group participation and child nutritional status at the ages of 1 and 5 years. This study finds that the relationship between child nutrition and maternal group participation depends on the level of maternal education. In fact, maternal group participation is positively associated with child height†for†age when children were 1 year old, for those children whose mothers had had no formal education. This same association fades at 5 years of age. Maternal group participation may affect child nutrition through a number of mechanisms. This paper provides suggestive evidence on the positive role that this participation might play in promoting better breastfeeding practice and a more secure mother–child bond and in easing mothers’ access to additional resources and support.

We use unique individual-level panel data from Ethiopia to investigate the role of aspirations for human-capital investments. More specifically, we investigate how parental and children's aspirations form and document the relation between early aspirations and educational attainment at the age of 15 and 19. We find that aspirations are predictive of the number of year of schooling completed upon controlling for cognitive and non-cognitive skills together with a broad set of individuals and household-level characteristics. Interestingly, this correlation is stronger for boys than for girls. We find evidence of an early age pro-boys gender bias in aspirations which is diverted by age 19 when more girls than boys are still enroled at school. Finally, we documented the transmission of aspirations from parents to children and the role played by parental non-educational expectations in explaining this gender bias.

Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds of data on a cohort of children surveyed repeatedly between 2002 and 2013. We find a small but significant positive effect of the programme on both numeracy skills and vocabulary. This is driven mainly by children in households that had graduated (left) the programme just before 2013. We argue that this is at least partially related to time allocation: graduates of the programme spent more time in school than continuing beneficiaries. We also find evidence that the maths (though not language) improvement is more pronounced for boys.

Usamos un único conjunto de datos longitudinales de Perú para investigar la relación entre competencias psicosociales relacionadas con los conceptos de autoestima, autoeficacia y aspiraciones, y una serie de conductas de riesgo en un período crucial de transición entre la adolescencia y la adultez temprana. En primer lugar, documentamos una alta prevalencia de comportamientos riesgosos, con una de cada dos personas participando en al menos una actividad arriesgada a la edad de 19 años, y un aumento dramático entre las edades de 15 y 19. En segundo lugar, encontramos un pronunciado pro-masculino sesgo y algunas diferencias según el área de residencia, particularmente en el consumo de alcohol, que es más prevalente en las áreas urbanas. En tercer lugar, encontramos una correlación negativa (robusta a una serie de especificaciones) entre la autoestima temprana y las conductas arriesgadas posteriores. Además, aspirar a la educación superior a la edad de 15 se correlaciona con una menor probabilidad de beber y participar en conductas delictivas a la edad de 19 años. De manera similar, tales aspiraciones protegen a las niñas de conductas sexuales riesgosas.

This policy note is a diagnostic of the state of Nigerian skills and human capital. It seeks to understand the kinds and levels of human capital that Nigeria possesses to support its efforts toward economic competitiveness over the next two decades. It also looks at inefficiencies of the Nigerian skills-building system, including the barriers to growth, barriers to sharing prosperity, and presents policy recommendations and actions to overcome these constraints. The policy note offers key insights into the drivers of the labor market, the underlying analysis of why Nigeria has been unable to reduce its poverty rate over time, the jobs landscape, and the drivers, dimensions, and directions for skills development to transform the Nigerian economy. The emphasis is on directions for public sector responsibility and public-private partnerships. The study reinforces the nexus between the jobs and the employability. Finally, it provides the analytical bases and policy and programmatic directions for the government of Nigeria in keeping with the World Bank country partnership strategy (FY2014-17).

En la literatura anterior, el capital social se ha formulado como un sustituto de otras formas de capital, como el capital físico y humano. Este trabajo contribuye a esta literatura, estudiando la asociación entre el acceso de las madres al capital social a través de la participación en organizaciones comunitarias y el estado nutricional de sus hijos en 1 y 5 años. Usando la muestra peruana del proyecto Young Lives, este estudio sugiere que, donde el capital humano es escaso, el capital social podría tener implicaciones importantes para el desarrollo del niño. El capital social materno se asocia positivamente con la altura a 1 año de edad para aquellos niños cuyas madres no tienen educación formal. No se encuentra una asociación significativa a los 5 años de edad.

This paper looks at horizontal sex segregation in education as a factor contributing to gender segregation in the labor market. Economic theories fail to explain why women with the same years of schooling and educational attainment as men are under-represented in many technical degrees, which typically lead to better paid occupations. Following Akerlof and Kranton (2000), I research whether gender identity affects boys' and girls' educational choices and when the gendered pattern appears first. Further, I test the hypothesis that single-sex schools attenuate the influence of gender-stereotypes. I use the National Pupil Database, which is a register of all pupils enrolled in state maintained schools in England and I focus on students in lower and upper secondary education. Results from my analysis suggest that gender stereotyping affects educational choices from the age of 14 and this effect is larger for girls than for boys. I also find that attending a sixth-form-single-sex school leads students to a less stereotyped educational choice, after controlling for endogenous self-selection into single-sex schools. This suggests that gender preferences can be modified by the environment.

Reducing the prevalence of teenage pregnancy remains an elusive goal for public policy in Peru. We use longitudinal data from the Young Lives Study in Peru to investigate on an extensive set of early circumstances and life changes that might be the risk factors for teenage childbearing—about one out of five girls in the sample was a teenage mother. The use of longitudinal data allows us to reduce the methodological concerns common to this type of analysis. According to our results, growing up in a poor household, being raised in a single‐parent household, leaving school at or before age 15, performing badly in school at age 12, and having the first sexual relation at or under age 16 are the key risk factors for early childbearing. From a time‐varying perspective, we uncover the importance of changes in the characteristics of a child and household that occurred prior to childbearing. Among other factors, we find that improvements in self‐efficacy and education aspirations during adolescence are associated with a decrease in the probability of early childbearing. Risk factors identified are considerably more relevant—in most cases, only relevant—for girls. From a policy perspective, our results suggest that initiatives aimed at improving school attendance, sexual education, and socioemotional competencies among adolescents might be effective tools to reduce the high rates of teenage pregnancy in Peru.