Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries

Norbert Schady, Jere Behrman, M. Caridad Araujo, Rodrigo Azuero (), Raquel Bernal (), David Bravo, Florencia López-Bóo (), Karen Macours, Daniela Marshall (), Christina Paxson and Renos Vakis ()
Additional contact information
Florencia López-Bóo: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); IZA
Daniela Marshall: Populations Study Center, University of Pennsylvania
Renos Vakis: District of Columbia, Washington DC, The World Bank
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Florencia Lopez Boo

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Research from the United States shows that gaps in early cognitive and non-cognitive ability appear early in the life cycle. Little is known about this important question for developing countries. This paper provides new evidence of sharp differences in cognitive development by socioeconomic status in early childhood for five Latin American countries. To help with comparability, we use the same measure of receptive language ability for all five countries. We find important differences in development in early childhood across countries, and steep socioeconomic gradients within every country. For the three countries where we can follow children over time, there are few substantive changes in scores once children enter school. Our results are robust to different ways of defining socioeconomic status, to different ways of standardizing outcomes, and to selective non-response on our measure of cognitive development.

Keywords: early childhood; socioeconomic gaps; Latin-American (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2014-01-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-dev, nep-lam, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries (2019)
Journal Article: Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries (2015)
Working Paper: Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries (2015)
Working Paper: Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries (2015)
Working Paper: Wealth gradients in early childhood cognitive development in five Latin American countries (2014)
Working Paper: Wealth Gradients in Early Childhood Cognitive Development in Five Latin American Countries (2014)
Working Paper: Wealth gradients in early childhood cognitive development in five Latin American countries (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:14-010

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