Young Lives Findings


Posted on 12-07-2011	Translate this page

After the Young Lives Seminar & Presentation at The New School and The City University of New York in New York City (CUNY), country reports and summaries from the third survey are available to download.

The reports feature material on:

•    Understanding the changes in the lives of poor children: Initial findings from Ethiopia
•    The impact of growth on childhood poverty in Andhra Pradesh: Initial findings from India
•    Tackling Disparities: Who gets left behind? Initial findings from Peru
•    How children are faring in the new millennium; initial findings from Vietnam

The Young Lives project is a longitudinal study of childhood poverty in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, involving 12,000 children in four countries over 15 years. The research data has been collected from 2002 and will continue until 2016.

Young Lives collects data on two cohorts, aged around 8 and 15 years old in 2009. The reports describe trends over the lives of the children up to now and also present comparisons between the two cohorts at the same age. It examines changes in their lives over the period in a range of areas, including monetary poverty trends, education, nutritional status, subjective well-being, time use, shocks and adverse events and national policy programs.

Patterns vary by country, but core themes emerge, including the following:

•    Household increases in consumption and wealth levels were reported, along with some improvements in access to basic services.
•    The data show high and ongoing exposure to risk and adverse events both before and during the triple food price crisis with extreme food price volatility. Food inflation was reported by many families.
•    The survey data highlight small improvements in some indicators of child well-being, at a significantly slower rate than the very fast economic growth experienced over the period. These results reinforce concerns about the extent to which economic growth is yielding direct benefits for children in the region.
•    The data show a clear, continuing pattern of interlinked inequalities often faced by the same groups of children. They show an accumulation of inequalities over the course of the 2002-2009 study, or over the life of the children.

The research findings were presented at the Young Lives Seminar and Presentation hosted by Equity for Children at The New School with CUNY and Rutgers University on February 7-8, 2012.

Click HERE to find out more about the February seminar, or email your questions to us.

To download the Young Lives country reports, click HERE.