The Impact of Early Childhood Development Interventions on Children’s Health in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Ryan McWay, Pallavi Prabhakar and Ayo Ellis
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Ayo Ellis: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

No 14/2022, Discussion Paper Series in Economics from Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

Abstract: Investing in a child’s early years reduces incidences of stunting, wasting, worm infections, and anemia among young children. Yet, 250 million children are at risk of not reaching their full development potential in low-and-middle income countries (LMIC) due to inadequate nutrition and lack of early stimulation. Multiple early childhood health interventions such as growth monitoring, nutrition supplementation, cash transfers, handwashing, and deworming have been tested to evaluate their impact on improving child health outcomes in LMIC. However, there is limited evidence assessing the relative benefits of implementing one type of intervention over another. This review is among the first to identify the interventions which have comparatively outperformed others in improving children’s physical health since the year 2000 and the gaps in the quality of existing evidence. Upon a comprehensive review of the impact from 39 early childhood interventions, we find that interventions including nutrition or cash based assistance outperform interventions offering information based support or growth monitoring. Further examination of the long term impacts, cost-effectiveness, and extended exposure of these interventions is needed to understand what works in improving child health during early years.

Keywords: Early Childhood Development (ECD); Systematic Review; Meta-analysis; Health; Lower-and-Middle Income Countries (LMIC) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I31 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2022-10-07
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