Longitudinal Studies and Policy for Children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from Young Lives

Life Course Approaches in Global Health

“…In that respect, the "data revolution" debated around the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals framework should integrate resources to support longitudinal data infrastructures. Along cross-sectional information, they can provide major insights relevant for policy-making (Dornan 2016).…”

“…The Young Lives Study, initiated in 2002 under the lead of the Oxford University, aims to assess the impact of a range of transformations occurring in less affluent contexts, including technological, economic, and social change. Data has been collected with 12,000 children of two age groups (6-18 months and 7-8 years) living in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam (Dornan 2016). The World Health Organization Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE) initiated in 2002 is a longitudinal study of adults aged 50 and over with four waves of data collected in China, Ghana, India, Russia, South Africa, and Mexico.…”

A test of the instability hypothesis in low- and middle-income countries.

“…The relationship between family structure transitions, stress, and children’s outcomes may differ in LMICs compared with high-income countries. Transitions may pose more of a threat to children living in LMICs because they could push families more easily into poverty (more families are close to the edge; government safety nets for families are by-and-large not strong), with detrimental health impacts (Dornan & Woodhead, 2015; Kousky, 2016). Thinking about the four LMICs included in this article then (Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam), we might expect family structure transitions to be particularly financially harmful in Ethiopia since it has the highest proportion of families living in poverty (The World Bank, 2022), and therefore a higher proportion of families who could be pushed into additional hardship following a transition.…”

Inclusive sustainable development: a human rights perspective

“…These aspects are all at the heart of struggles for human rights. Evaluations of global and country-level performance on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and some other relevant assessments -such as the annual Human Development Reports by the UNDP and the annual State of the World's Children reports by UNICEF -have clearly substantiated the importance of confronting inequality (e.g., based on gender [19], age [20 ], ethnicity [21], disability [22,23], poverty [24], sexual orientation [25] or geography [21]) and pursuing inclusive development [26]. The nature of the MDGs "has encouraged many countries to focus on those that are easiest to reach" [27] which has on occasion resulted in disregard of the situation, needs and rights of especially vulnerable or marginalized groups [28] such as indigenous peoples [29], persons with disabilities [30] or people living in remote rural areas [21,31].…”