Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/115447 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-482en
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC
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.
Subjects: 
cognitive development
poverty
gradients
JEL: 
I24
I25
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.