The Relations Between Caregiver Education, Home Stimulation, and Children’s Developmental Outcomes: Research in Majority World Countries

Abstract

Caregiver education and home stimulation have shown positive associations with children’s developmental outcomes in early childhood in high-income “Minority World” countries, and these processes also predict children’s long-term health and well-being. However, relatively little is known about these processes in low- and middle-income “Majority World” countries, where an estimated 250 million children under the age of five are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. This paper attempts to address these gaps in knowledge by exploring the relations between caregiver education, household stimulation, and early childhood development in a sample of infants and toddlers aged birth to three using data on 9,099 caregiver-child dyads from eight under-represented Majority World sites: Brazil, Guatemala, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Zambia. It also explored the differences in these developmental processes between children’s sex and geographical regions. Results showed that home stimulation partially mediated the associations between caregiver education and children’s developmental outcomes across eight sites. These developmental processes differed by geographical regions and by children’s sex. In sum, these findings contribute to the field’s understanding of the universality and specificity of child development across settings and child characteristics. They also suggest the importance of supporting caregiver education and home stimulation activities as means of promoting children’s developmental outcomes, as well as the need to promote gender equity in the Majority World to ensure equal access to learning opportunities, especially opportunities in the home.