Cognitive Development among Young Children in Low-Income Countries

Abstract

Early childhood development encompasses children’s cognitive development as well as their physical growth and well-being and socioemotional development. While endorsing the broad view of early childhood development highlighted in the introduction to this book, this chapter focuses on the cognitive domain, refl ecting recent advances in the measurement of cognitive development in low-income countries. The objective of this chapter is to review the evidence that cognitive delays in early childhood can quickly accumulate among the poorest children and that indicators of cognitive development in early childhood strongly correlate with socioeconomic status. The fi rst part of the chapter takes stock of existing evidence on cognitive development in early childhood. A large share of evidence originates from developed countries, with more recent evidence coming from lower-middleincome countries in Latin America (in particular Ecuador and Nicaragua) as well as Madagascar. The second part of the chapter presents new evidence on patterns in cognitive development in Cambodia and Mozambique, two low-income countries. The chapter documents that young children in Cambodia and Mozambique are exposed to large cognitive delays that increase with age. It shows that cognitive development is associated with socioeconomic status as proxied by wealth and caregiver education, and Cognitive Development among Young Children in Low-Income Countries