Dosage of early childhood care and education and child development outcomes in East Asia Pacific

Abstract

Children in low and middle income countries are likely to experience adversities that are associated with poor development and learning. A growing body of evidence has demonstrated a positive relation between participation in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programs and the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in both high income and low and middle income countries. Less is known about the amount of ECCE (dosage) or quality thresholds that are necessary to promote child development. Against this background, this study examined associations between ECCE experience and early development in Cambodia, China, Mongolia, and Vanuatu using data from the validation sample of the East Asia-Pacific Early Child Development Scales (EAP-ECDS). The total sample analyzed included 4,712 ethnic majority children (2,336 girls), ranging in age from 36 to 71 months, and their primary caregiver. Country and age-adjusted developmental z-scores were re-centered to have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 points. Controlling for age, gender, parental education and occupation, household wealth, and urbanicity, hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze associations between participation and total dosage (total hours attended) of ECCE and children’s cognitive (α from .88 to .94 across countries), language (α = .89 to .95), and socio-emotional (α = .89 to .94) development. Results indicated that children who received ECCE had significantly better cognitive (β = 4.8), language (β = 6.0), and socio-emotional (β = 4.1) development than those who did not. Among children who did not attend ECCE, age-adjusted cognitive (β = .10 per month of age) and language (β = .14) scores were significantly lower for older children than they were for younger children. ECCE dosage was positively associated with cognitive (β = 1.5 per additional 1000 hours) and socio-emotional (β = 0.9) scores in China, language scores in Mongolia (β = 1.2) and Cambodia (β = 4.6), but negatively associated with socio-emotional scores in Cambodia (β = -5.7). Overall, results indicate that ECCE is beneficial for children’s early development though many children in the region are not able to reap these rewards due to barriers to access. Compared to their same age peers who participated in ECCE, older children showed poorer development than younger ones. Few studies have reported on the effects of cumulative ECCE dosage (Wasik & Snell, 2015), and as such the current study provides an important insight into how much ECCE is beneficial for child development. This study was not able to analyze ECCE quality, but existing evidence suggests that the teaching content and quality are important elements of ECCE, and that low quality ECCE may produce either no benefit or negative effects on child development (Melhuish et al., 2015).