Socioeconomic gradients in child development: Evidence from a Chilean longitudinal study 2010-2017.

Empirical evidence shows that lack of resources during infancy and the process of accumulating disadvantages throughout childhood have important consequences for cognitive and socio-emotional development. This paper examines socioeconomic gradients across language and socio-emotional measures. Using longitudinal data from 7-year, three-wave panel data, we study the patterns of socioeconomic status and child development in Chile and estimate how much of the wealth gap can be explained by different mediators like maternal educational and skills, child attendance of preschool and school, possession of books, or domestic violence indicators. We show that there are strong associations between household wealth and child development, and that, as the child grows, the gap between the most extreme quintiles of the distribution, both in cognitive and socio-emotional skills, persists but decreases in magnitude. Taking advantage of the longitudinal nature of the data, we calculate a permanent skill for each child and each skill dimension in this 7-year period. The analysis for the permanent component shows that wealth gaps are important to determine language, but not socio-emotional skills, and that the gap is larger for girls than for boys in the early childhood period. While mediators account for some of the associations, there is still a large socioeconomic gap that persists in receptive language among children. The most important factors that mediate the wealth gaps are inherited from maternal characteristics. By understanding the dynamism of social and cognitive vulnerability experienced during childhood and employing longitudinal data and methods, this study contributes to and extends the existing literature on socioeconomic gaps and child development in the Latin American context.

Harsh parenting during early childhood and child development.

We study the relationship between harsh parenting strategies, including psychological and physical aggressions that do not constitute abuse, on early childhood cognitive and socio-emotional development. We estimate a value-added model that controls for a rich set of child, mother, and family characteristics, from a nationally representative sample of Chilean children aged 52-83 months. We find harsh parenting is significantly associated with lower verbal skills (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) of a magnitude of 0.06 standard deviations, and with increased behavioral problems (Child Behavior Check List), by 0.11 standard deviations, including internalization, externalization, and sleep problems. We also find that the more systematic (persistent) harsh parenting is, the stronger the association; the association is similar for boys and girls; reaches its peak at about 5 years of age; and it is stronger for children with less educated mothers.

Income Inequality or Performance Gap? A Multilevel Study of School Violence in 52 Countries.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to examine the association between income inequality and school violence and between the performance inequality and school violence in two international samples. METHODS: The study used data from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 and from the Central Intelligence Agency of United States which combined information about academic performance and students' victimization (physical and social) for 269,456 fourth-grade students and 261,747 eighth-grade students, with gross domestic product and income inequality data in 52 countries. Ecological correlations tested associations between income inequality and victimization and between school performance inequality and victimization among countries. Multilevel ordinal regression and multilevel regression analyses tested the strength of these associations when controlling for socioeconomic and academic performance inequality at school level and family socioeconomic status and academic achievement at student level. RESULTS: Income inequality was associated with victimization rates in both fourth and eighth grade (r ≈ .60). Performance inequality shows stronger association with victimization among eighth graders (r ≈ .46) compared with fourth graders (r ≈ .30). Multilevel analyses indicate that both an increase in the income inequality in the country and school corresponds with more frequent physical and social victimization. On the other hand, an increase in the performance inequality at the system level shows no consistent association to victimization. However, school performance inequality seems related to an increase in both types of victimizations. CONCLUSIONS: Our results contribute to the finding that income inequality is a determinant of school violence. This result holds regardless of the national performance inequality between students.