The effect of early childhood stunting on children’s cognitive achievements: Evidence from young lives Ethiopia

Background: There is little empirical evidence on the effect of childhood malnutrition on children’s cognitive achievements in low income countries like Ethiopia. A longitudinal data is thus vital to understand the factors that influence cognitive development of children over time, particularly how early childhood stunting affects cognitive achievement of children up to the age of 8 years.Objective: To examine the effect of early childhood stunting on cognitive achievements of children using longitudinal data that incorporate anthropometric measurements and results of cognitive achievement tests such as Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and Cognitive Development Assessment quantitative tests.Method: Defining stunted children as those having a standardized height for age z-score less than -2; we used a Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to examine the effect of early childhood stunting on measures of cognitive performance of children. The balance of the propensity score matching techniques was checked and found to be satisfied (P<0.01)Results: Early childhood stunting is significantly negatively associated with cognitive performance of children. Controlled for confounding variables such as length of breastfeeding, relative size of the child at birth, health problems of early childhood such as acute respiratory illness and malaria, baseline household wealth, child gender, household size and parental education, estimates from PSM show that stunted children scored 16.1% less in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and 48.8% less in the Quantitative Assessment test at the age of eight, both statistically significant at P<0.01.Conclusions: It is important to realize the importance of early investment in terms of child health and nutrition until five years for the cognitive performance of children. As household wealth and parental education are particularly found to play an important role in children’s nutritional achievements, policy measures that are directed in improving household’s livelihood may have a spill-over impact in improving child nutritional status, and consequently cognitive development and schooling. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2017;31(2):75-84]Keywords: Early childhood, stunting, cognitive achievements, Ethiopi

Understanding the impact of large-scale educational reform on students’ learning outcomes in Ethiopia: the GEQIP-II case

The Ethiopian education system has been very dynamic over recent years, with a series of large-scale education program interventions, such as the Second Phase of General Education Quality Improvement Project (GEQIP-II) that aimed to improve student learning outcomes. Despite the large-scale programs, empirical studies assessing how such interventions have worked and who benefited from the reforms are limited. This study aims to understand the impact of the reform on Grade 4 students’ maths learning outcomes over a school year using two comparable Grade 4 cohort students from 33 common schools in the Young Lives (YL, 2012-13) and RISE (2018-19) surveys. We employ matching techniques to estimate the effects of the reform by accounting for baseline observable characteristics of the two cohorts matched within the same schools. Results show that the RISE cohort started the school year with a lower average test score than the YL cohort. At the start of Grade 4, the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) is lower by 0.36 SD (p<0.01). In terms of learning gain over the school year, however, the RISE cohort has shown a modestly higher value-added than the YL cohort, with ATT of 0.074 SD (p<0.05). The learning gain particularly is higher for students in rural schools (0.125 SD & p<0.05), which is also stronger among rural boys (0.184 SD & p<0.05) than among rural girls. We consider the implications of our results from a system dynamic perspective; in that the GEQIP-II reform induced unprecedented access to primary education, where the national Net Enrolment Rate (NER) rose from 85.7 percent in 2012-13 to 95.3 percent in 2019-20, which is equivalent to nearly 3 million additional learners to the primary education at a national level. This shows that learning levels have not increased in tandem with enrolment, and the unprecedented access for nearly all children might create pressure on the school system. Current policy efforts should therefore focus on sustaining learning gains for all children while creating better access

Is Child Work Detrimental to the Educational Achievement of Children? Results from Young Lives Study in Ethiopia

The objective of this study was to explore the effect of child work on educational achievement as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Identifying the causal effects of child work on education is made difficult because the choice of work and/or schooling is made simultaneously and may be determined by the same potentially unobserved factors. Therefore, both Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Instrumental Variable (IV) estimation methods were used to identify the effect of child work on educational achievement. We used dummy variables for drought, crop failure and pests and diseases, for increases in the prices of food, and for urban locality as instruments which are highly, though not directly, correlated with achievement in education. The results obtained showed that child work had a negative effect on child achievement in education. Numerically, an increase in the number of hours worked per day by one resulted in a reduction in the PPVT score of a child by 6.2 percent. Therefore, it is important to design mechanisms that enable households to withstand income shocks without resorting to child work. The Government of Ethiopia might need to consider implementing a programme that provides financial incentives to households to send their children to school regularly, thus potentially increasing their educational achievement.Key words: child work, educational achievement, PPVT, Young Lives, Ethiopia; Child labor- Ethiopia; Education- EthiopiaJEL Codes: J22, D63, I38 &amp; C3

The Implications of COVID-19 for Early Childhood Education in Ethiopia: Perspectives from Parents and Caregivers

Funder: World Bank Group (US)Funder: Foreign and Commonwealth Office; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000617Abstract: Recent research on the effects of COVID-19 on school closures has mainly focused on primary and secondary education, with extremely limited attention to early childhood education (ECE). To address this gap, we identify the extent to which parents and caregivers with pre-primary school-aged children were engaged in their children’s learning during school closures in Ethiopia. Our focus on Ethiopia is of particular relevance given that ECE provision has expanded dramatically in recent years, aimed at ensuring children are prepared for primary school. Using data collected through a phone survey with 480 parents and caregivers, the results revealed that learning disruption due to COVID-19 school closures is likely to be substantial and will probably widen existing inequalities further. Many poorer households and those where parents or caregivers are not literate, are less likely to have child-oriented learning resources, and home learning activities between parents and children in these households are limited. The study highlights that greater attention needs to be paid to mitigate the threats of COVID-19 on Ethiopia’s recent gains in ECE, to prevent the pandemic from further reinforcing inequalities between children from advantaged and disadvantaged households

Putting Children First: New Frontiers in the Fight Against Child Poverty in Africa

Despite important strides in the fight against poverty in the past two decades, child poverty remains widespread and persistent, particularly in Africa. Poverty in all its dimensions is detrimental for early childhood development and often results in unreversed damage to the lives of girls and boys, locking children and families into intergenerational poverty. This edited volume contributes to the policy initiatives aiming to reduce child poverty and academic understanding of child poverty and its solutions by bringing together applied research from across the continent. With the Sustainable Development Goals having opened up an important space for the fight against child poverty, not least by broadening its conceptualization to be multidimensional, this collection aims to push the frontiers by challenging existing narratives and exploring alternative understandings of the complexities and dynamics underpinning child poverty. Furthermore, it examines policy options that work to address this critical challenge.Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) at the University of Bergen.publishedVersio

"A dream come true"? Adolescents' perspectives on urban relocation and life in condominiums in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

From 2006, the Ethiopian government embarked on a programme of urban redevelopment, moving people from inner-city areas to lowest cost condominium housing in the suburbs. This longitudinal mixed-methods study tracked adolescents before and after the move, with an eight-year interval in between, in three Young Lives sites in the capital city, Addis Ababa. The paper compares the views of those relocated and those who stayed behind, and the opinions of those relocated before and after their move. Condominium housing mainly benefited low- and middle-income households in transitioning to home ownership, since the poorest could not afford the deposits and monthly mortgage costs and the richest preferred to build their own houses. Overall, the move appears to have led to better housing and improved sanitation. Nevertheless, students reported greater difficulties commuting to their schools in the first year; and the adolescents interviewed considered the schools and health centres in the condominiums to be of lower quality that those in their previous places of residence, and the markets and shops to be initially less well developed. In addition, there were fewer options for recreation. However, the adolescents felt that the changes were mainly positive and most soon adapted to the new social environment. They appreciated the condominiums with kitchens and toilets as modern forms of housing, though social ties in the new communities tended to be weaker. They also reported improvements in the physical environment, with less pollution and fewer security risks. There were gender differences in the decision-making abilities, leisure activities and spending habits of adolescents, with girls having less freedom in general. This lack of freedom was, however, somewhat compensated for by their better access to internet and social media. This working paper is an output of Young Lives and the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) programme (www.odi.org.uk). An accompanying Policy Brief will be published in early April 2022

GEQIP-E Implementation Practices and Value-Added Learning at Primary Schools in Ethiopia

This paper focuses on research from the RISE Ethiopia team and addresses two major objectives: analysing the progress made towards achieving key goals under the four focus areas of GEQIP-E and whether the indicators of GEQIP-E implementation have been associated with estimated improvements in numeracy over one academic year

Learning Losses during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ethiopia: Comparing Student Achievement in Early Primary Grades before School Closures, and after They Reopened

This Insight note aims to estimate the magnitude of learning loss attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic in Ehtiopia by comparing the numeracy levels and progress of Grade 1 and Grade 4 pupils across two academic years: 2018-19 and 2020-21 and suggests that school closures exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in education, where progress was much lower for rural students compared to those in urban areas