Living conditions and child development: Generation of an aggregate index of ecological dimensions

SEGRETIN, M. SOLEDAD; NACHON, JUAN IGNACIO; PETETTA, DANIEL; LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.

Washington

Congreso; Conference Series of the Society for the Study of Human Developoment; 2022

Society for the Study of Human Development

 In recent decades, our understanding of the relationships between living conditions and different developmental attributes during childhood has been deepened In particular, evidence suggests that the emergence and development of cognitive and socio emotional competencies follow different trajectories that are susceptible to the quality of the developmental contexts (e g home, school,neighborhoods e g Lipina Colombo, 2009 Because childhood poverty is a complex construct involving several factors at the individual, family, and environmental levels, its conceptual and operational definitions vary depending on the theoretical approach Spicker et al 2009 In Latin America, scientific study of the impact of poverty on emotional, cognitive and learning development has been approached mainly by economists, pediatric epidemiologists, developmental psychologists and, to a lesser extent, by neuroscientists Segretin et al 2016 In general, studies on childhood poverty and cognitive development approach the definition of poverty in terms of socioeconomic status (Then, it has been remarked that to better understand the impactthat living conditions have on child development, there is a need to expand the models in ways that reflect children?s diverse experiences rather than focusing on SES and educational indicators e g Lipina 2016 Felner DeVries, 2013 In the last decades, a variety of approaches were put forward with the aim of generating measurement tools that address the needs of children, including contributions of developmental and ecological theories For example the identification of moderate and severe deprivation model proposed by Gordon et al 2003 and the poverty index Roelen Gassman 2008 In both approaches, the choice of indicators and dimensions was based on a multidimensional perspective of child poverty, and a plurality of children?s material, social and developmental needs were taken into account The use of indices offers two important advantages 1 the synthesis of various indicators in different domains, and 2 the generation of a single number that simplifies communication Consequently, this type of approach is useful for making comparisons between regions orcountries.