Children's Physical Home Environment, National Development, and Early Childhood Development in 51 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Abstract

Young children tend to spend most of their time at home—or nearby—actively engaged with the people and objects present in the home setting. Indeed, the properties of a child's home place penetrate every aspect of a child's development, from motivations and attitudes to health and competence. This chapter presents a rationale for looking at the conditions of the physical home environment and how those conditions are implicated in children's health, competence, and adaptive functioning. It focuses on four domains of the overall physical home environment: quality of housing, household electronic assets, household amenities, and learning materials, and how each domain may help determine children's development. The chapter establishes children's home environments in low and middle income countries (LMIC) using girls and boys in 51 LMIC in relation to specific domains of early childhood development. It explores the overall quality of the physical home environment across child gender and LMIC at different levels of national development.