Early Childhood Development, Family Structure, and Electronic Device Usage: Evidence from Thailand

Abstract

This paper assesses the interaction of family structure and electronic device usage on cognitive and non-cognitive development of children under the age of 5 years old. The study uses the 2015 Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey of Thailand to conduct the analysis. We adopt endogenous probit switching, bivariate probit, and binary probit models in this study. Specification analyses point out that the endogenous probit switching model provides the best fit for our data. Our results demonstrate that when children use electronic device it can increase the probability of having good cognitive development by 28.6% while lower the probability of having good non-cognitive ability by 6.1%. Furthermore, it is found that children residing in skipped generation family may experience 26.1% higher probability of being cognitively on track comparing to their complete family counterparts if there is no electronic device use. Conversely, children living with single mothers are the most vulnerable group in that the probability of achieving good non-cognitive skills drops by 6.3% if they report using any electronic device. Given that Thailand has experienced the fastest growing use of internet in South East Asia during the past two decades as well as having one of the most rapid demographic transition in the region, other developing countries should be able to learn from this unique setting to see strong interplay of electronic device use and family structure towards early childhood development. JEL Classification: I31, J12, J13