A key contribution of life-course analysis is in exploring the timing of critical influences and experiences that affect children’s outcomes, including factors that increase (or reduce) resilience.

1. What Shapes Children’s Development?
Evidence from Young Lives cohort study
Paul Dornan
paul.dornan@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Presentation aim:
- Key findings from draft synthesis paper
- Reflections for policy and programming
Young Lives study:
- Mixed-method cohort study following lives of 12,000 children over 15 years
- Children growing up in Ethiopia, Andhra Pradesh, Peru and Vietnam

2. Starting principles
• Children’s lives are lived multi-dimensionally, even if
policy is delivered sectorally. Achieving objectives
within a sector, requires acting beyond it
• The earliest years are critical in shaping children’s
health, capacities and opportunities. The impact of
some early deprivations may be irreversible, but in
some circumstances recovery may be possible
• Looked across the early life course, disadvantages
typically accumulate. Identifying the key triggers for
diverging pathways that open up (or close down)
opportunities is the first step to ensuring equity

3. Ways of thinking about the life course
Shapin
Societal context: physical/natural environment; jobs;
infrastructure; values and norms
Household: poverty; stage of development; risk exposure
Transition events: e.g. school enrolment;
family ill health or death; household change;
migration; livelihood change
Children’s development trajectories and agency: age-sensitive/critical periods;
accumulated (dis)advantage
Incidence and nature of transitions
shaped by social /policy change,
household stage, social norms.
Impact conditioned
by resilience factors
Potential
Intervention
Opportunities
Advantages:
• Linking earlier causes and later consequences
• Identifying the timing of when circumstances and events matter most
• Identifying the ways children’s developmental trajectories are embedded in
changing household, institutional, community and macro economic processes

4. Put differently: lives as lived, Teje’s story, age 9

5. Ways of thinking about the life course
Shapin
Societal context: physical/natural environment; jobs;
infrastructure; values and norms
Household: poverty; stage of development; risk exposure
Transition events: e.g. school enrolment;
family ill health or death; household change;
migration; livelihood change
Children’s development trajectories and agency: age-sensitive/critical periods;
accumulated (dis)advantage
Incidence and nature of transitions
shaped by social /policy change,
household stage, social norms.
Impact conditioned
by resilience factors
Potential
Intervention
Opportunities
Advantages:
• Linking earlier causes and later consequences
• Identifying the timing of when circumstances and events matter most
• Identifying the ways children’s developmental trajectories are embedded in
changing household, institutional, community and macro-economic processes

6. Children’s development is multidimensional with nutritional
status predictive of both later learning and psychosocial well-
being
Height at 15
years
Cognitive
skills at 15
years
Psychosocial development
at 15 years
Height at 12 Predicts later
height in four
countries
Predicts later
learning in
three countries
Does not predict later
psychosocial development
Cognitive skills
at 12
Predict later
height in one
country only
Predict
learning in
four countries
Predict later psychosocial
development in two
countries
Psychosocial
development at
12
Does not predict
later height
Predicts
learning in two
countries
Predicts later psychosocial
development in one county
only
Source: Sanchez, A. (2013) The structural relationship between nutrition, cognition and non-cognitive
skills: evidence from four developing countries, Young Lives Working Paper 111
Example: interdependencies between domains of development

7. Children’s development is multi-dimensional with nutritional
status predictive of both later learning and psychosocial
wellbeing
Height at 15
years
Cognitive
skills at 15
years
Psychosocial development
at 15 years
Height at 12 Predicts later
height in four
countries
Predicts later
learning in
three countries
Does not predict later
psychosocial development
Cognitive skills
at 12
Predict later
height in one
country only
Predict
learning in
four countries
Predict later psychosocial
development in two
countries
Psychosocial
development at
12
Does not predict
later height
Predicts
learning in two
countries
Predicts later psychosocial
development in one county
only
Source: Sanchez, A. (2013) The structural relationship between nutrition, cognition and non-cognitive
skills: evidence from four developing countries, Young Lives Working Paper 111
Example: interdependencies between domains of development

8. Children’s development is multi-dimensional with nutritional
status predictive of both later learning and psychosocial
wellbeing
Height at 15
years
Cognitive
skills at 15
years
Psychosocial development
at 15 years
Height at 12 Predicts later
height in four
countries
Predicts later
learning in
three countries
Does not predict later
psychosocial development
Cognitive skills
at 12
Predict later
height in one
country only
Predict
learning in
four countries
Predict later psychosocial
development in two
countries
Psychosocial
development at
12
Does not predict
later height
Predicts
learning in two
countries
Predicts later psychosocial
development in one county
only
Source: Sanchez, A. (2013) The structural relationship between nutrition, cognition and non-cognitive
skills: evidence from four developing countries, Young Lives Working Paper 111
Example: interdependencies between domains of development

9. Early circumstances are critically important to later
development across domains of children’s development
-1.6
-1.4
-1.2
-1.0
-0.8
-0.6
-0.4
-0.2
0.0
Heightforageby8
years(z-scores)
Child average height-for-age
at age 8 by household
characteristics at age 1
(2002), Ethiopia >>>>>>>
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Mathstestscore(out
of29questions)
Child average maths scores
at age 8 by household
characteristics at age 1
(2002), Ethiopia >>>>>>

10. But considerable change in development indicators beyond the
very earliest period of life
Example: change in height-for-age status between 1 year and 5 years
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Ethiopia Andhra Pradesh Peru Vietnam
Chidlrenstunted/notstuntedat1(%)
Stunted at 5 years
Not stunted at 5 years
Lundeen et al. (2013) ‘Growth faltering and recovery in children aged 1-8 years in four low– and
middle-income countries: Young Lives’, Public Health Nutrition

11. But considerable change in development indicators beyond the
very earliest period of life
Example: change in height for age status between 1 year and 5 years
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Stunted Not
stunted
Ethiopia Andhra Pradesh Peru Vietnam
Chidlrenstunted/notstuntedat1(%)
Stunted at 5 years
Not stunted at 5 years
Lundeen et al (2013) ‘Growth faltering and recovery in children aged 1-8 years in four low – and
middle income countries: Young Lives’, Public Health Nutrition
Faltering
Physically
recovering

12. With the risk of the accumulation of disadvantage with age
Example: change in vocabulary performance, Ethiopia
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
PPVT at 5 PPVT at 8
Averagepercentilerank
Children from better off
households with high initial
scores (N=266)
Children from poorer households
with high initial scores (N=88)
Children from better-off
households with low initial
scores (N=60)
Children from poorer households
with low initial scores (N=186)

13. But with more encouraging evidence that good policy can make
an important difference
Example: maths test results across grade 5 in Vietnam (age 10)
400
420
440
460
480
500
520
540
Oct-11 Apr-12
Average
Kinh
Ethnic
Minority
Source: Rolleston et al. (2013) Making Progress: Report of the Young Lives School Survey in Vietnam,
Young Lives Working Paper 100
What might have helped?
- Forms of teaching (e.g.
nature of curricula, ability
of teachers)
- Not being selected into
poorly performing schools
(e.g. Infrastructure,
teachers etc.)

14. Systematic and life-course differences in the
ways in which services are experienced
Example: access to pre-school, entrance and exit from formal school in
Andhra Pradesh

15. Children and young people in different age
phases face different pressures and
determinants of later transitions and outcomes
• Household central mediator of opportunities, with health
a major feature. Households with young children likely to
face particular need. Therefore anti-poverty policy likely
to be pro-child.
• Universalisation of schooling places school central in lives
and expectations of young people. Policy can create ‘cliff
edges’ triggering e.g. changes between schools; exams
within schools
• As children grow older, experiences widen, towards
school and wider society. At older ages ‘social’ risk
becomes increasingly important

16. Children and young people in different age
phases face different pressures and
determinants of later transitions and outcomes
Dercon, S. and A. Singh (2011) From Nutrition to Aspirations and Self-Efficacy: Gender
Bias over Time among Children in Four Countries, Young Lives Working Paper 71
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
Ethiopia
AP India
Peru
Vietnam
Maths test score gap
15
12
8
Pro girlPro boy
Example: test scores at by age stage

17. Implications
• Poverty a risk factor across age points:
- Effects accumulating with age
- With evidence of interaction between domains
• Early circumstances are vital, but there is dynamism
after the earliest point (recovery and faltering) –
potential for policy? Identification of key ‘transitions’?
• Effective policy can narrow gaps, but often doesn’t.
Equity concerns need to focus within systems
• Data revolution. Need for both monitoring of the extent
of disadvantages and evaluation to inform policy choices

18. Finally - future agenda
1. Analysis of Rounds 1- 4 (for Younger Cohort ages 1-12 years; for
Older Cohort ages 8-19 years). Fourth round being analysed
now, launch events September 2014
2. Key themes for planned analysis
Nutrition
• Child nutrition, growth and development.
• Mothers’ life-long nutrition history
Cognition and school-based learning
• School-based learning
• Cognition, nutrition and early care
Personal and social development in adolescents and youth
• Life-transition choices (including partnership, parenthood and work)
• Risk behaviours
Across all, trajectories and determinants of multi-dimensional disadvantage
3. Fifth (and currently final) round of data collection in 2016.
Data will then be available on phases from early childhood to
early adulthood.

19. Thank you