Social Determinants and Consequences of Early Childhood Development in China

Wangyang Li
Airan Liu, Peking University
Yu Xie, Princeton University

This article aims to investigate the social determinants and consequences of early childhood development, within the context of Contemporary China. Specifically, we use newly available data from the nationally representative, longitudinal China Family Panel Studies to examine the factors that affect child development in the first years and the impact that early childhood development has on future educational outcomes. The preliminary results support our hypotheses, indicating that: (1) family SES is significantly associated with early childhood growth and development, such as birth weight, linguistic skills, and etc. (2) these developmental deficits in early childhood have significant negative relationships to their verbal and mathematical scores during adolescence.

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 Presented in Session 11. Health & Mortality 2