Hentschel Elizabeth, Tomlinson Heather, Hasan Amer, Yousafzai Aisha, Ansari Amna, Tahir-Chowdhry Mahreen, Zamand Mina
Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 USA.
Education Global Practice, World Bank, Washington, USA.
Int J Early Child. 2023 Mar 8:1-39. doi: 10.1007/s13158-023-00353-2.
This paper analyzes the risks to child development and school readiness among children under age 6 in Pakistan. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey conducted in the midst of a global pandemic, between December 2021 and February 2022, we present the first nationally representative estimates of child development for children under 3 years of age and school readiness for children 3-6 years of age, using internationally validated instruments. The paper examines how risk factors that were exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as parental distress, lack of psychosocial stimulation, food insecurity, low maternal education, no enrollment in early childhood education, and living in a rural area, are associated with children's outcomes. The data indicate that more than half (57 percent) of parents with children under age 3 were distressed and that 61 percent of households reported cutting down on the size of or skipping meals since the start of the pandemic. The data reveal that over half of parents fail to engage in adequate psychosocial stimulation with their child and enrollment in early childhood education is very low (39 percent). The paper finds that child development outcomes decline rapidly as the number of risks increase. Specifically, for children under 3 years, lack of psychosocial stimulation at home and higher levels of parental distress were most significantly associated with lower child development levels. For a child aged 3-6 years, early childhood education enrollment and the amount of psychosocial stimulation the child received at home had the strongest association with school readiness scores.
本文分析了巴基斯坦6岁以下儿童在儿童发展和入学准备方面面临的风险。我们利用2021年12月至2022年2月在全球疫情期间进行的一项具有全国代表性的电话调查，使用经过国际验证的工具，首次给出了3岁以下儿童发展和3至6岁儿童入学准备情况的全国代表性估计数据。本文探讨了因新冠疫情而加剧的风险因素，如父母的困扰、缺乏心理社会刺激、粮食不安全、母亲教育程度低、未参加幼儿教育以及居住在农村地区等，是如何与儿童的发展结果相关联的。数据显示，超过一半（57%）的3岁以下儿童的父母感到困扰，自疫情开始以来，61%的家庭报告减少了饮食量或不吃正餐。数据还显示，超过一半的父母未能对孩子进行足够的心理社会刺激，幼儿教育的入学率非常低（39%）。本文发现，随着风险数量的增加，儿童发展结果迅速下降。具体而言，对于3岁以下的儿童，家庭中缺乏心理社会刺激以及父母的困扰程度较高与较低的儿童发展水平最显著相关。对于3至6岁的儿童，幼儿教育入学率以及孩子在家中接受的心理社会刺激量与入学准备分数的关联最为紧密。
