Schady Norbert, Behrman Jere, Araujo Maria Caridad, Azuero Rodrigo, Bernal Raquel, Bravo David, Lopez-Boo Florencia, Macours Karen, Marshall Daniela, Paxson Christina, Vakis Renos
Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, US,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, US,
J Hum Resour. 2015 Spring;50(2):446-463. doi: 10.3368/jhr.50.2.446.
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.
美国的研究表明，早期认知和非认知能力的差距在生命周期早期就已出现。对于发展中国家而言，这个重要问题鲜为人知。本文提供了新的证据，表明五个拉丁美洲国家幼儿期认知发展因社会经济地位存在显著差异。为便于比较，我们对所有五个国家都使用相同的接受性语言能力衡量标准。我们发现，各国幼儿期发展存在重要差异，且每个国家内部都有明显的社会经济梯度。对于我们能够长期跟踪儿童的三个国家，儿童入学后分数几乎没有实质性变化。我们的结果在定义社会经济地位的不同方式、标准化结果的不同方式以及认知发展衡量指标上的选择性无回应方面都很稳健。
