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2.7 million children have never attended school: 2,700,000 children in Latin America and the Caribbean have never attended school and, on average, 27% of children drop out of school before completing elementary school.

THE ISSUES

The Issues >

Early Childhood Development

Education

Nutrition

Health

The Issues

EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

Comprehensive Early Childhood Development is a powerful social and financial investment for immediate results that grow into the future as experts agree it is one of the best tools to fight poverty. Research has shown helping a child in the early stages of life has a multiplier effect for society. If the window of opportunity presented by the early years is missed, it becomes increasingly difficult, in terms of both time and resources, for a child to reach their full potential in life.

Early Childhood Development (ECD) is a set of systematic and comprehensive education, nutrition and health interventions, as well as emotional and social stimulation for children between 0 and 6 years of age. All of these approaches must be integrated, as each serves an important role in future success.

The early years of life are crucial in influencing a range of health and social outcomes for an entire lifetime. Research shows that many challenges in adult society – well being, obesity, mental health problems, heart disease, criminality, and literacy – have their roots in early childhood.

Early childhood is considered to be the most important developmental phase in life. Eighty percent of an individual’s brain develops between 0 and 3 years of age; thoughts, sensations, personality traits and motor abilities are formed during this period while basic communication skills, especially speech and language, develop between 3 and 6 years of age. If the neurological development in children under three is delayed due to inadequate prenatal care, malnutrition or lack of stimulation, it is difficult and costly to compensate for the negative effects this will have on the rest of their lives. Medium and long-term consequences include: poorer health, disruptive (antisocial) behaviors leading to criminality later in life, learning difficulties, school failure and a diminished income-earning capacity - all issues that have profound implications.

With proper ECD interventions, including integrating parents into all facets of ECD programs, children who are born in poverty today will have a better chance to overcome it and raise thriving children of their own. Children from the poorest communities are least likely to have access to quality ECD programs yet they benefit the most.

	EDUCATION
	For each dollar invested in early childhood, returns can be as high as USD$17. A poor child who receives high-quality ECD has 40 percent less probability of requiring special education, is 30 percent more likely to complete secondary school and has twice as many probabilities of attending college.

	NUTRITION
	Children’s optimal growth and development requires adequate nutrition, and begins in utero with adequately nourished mothers. Twenty percent of children under the age of 5 or the equivalent of almost 9 million children in Latin America suffer from poor nutrition as well as vitamin and mineral deficiencies and almost 50 percent of children under the age of five suffer from anemia. It is essential to reduce malnutrition, especially between 0 and 3 years of age to ensure proper brain development. A decrease of 1 percent in malnutrition rate, can lead to a 4 percent decrease in poverty.

	HEALTH
	Child survival and child health agendas are indivisible from Early Child Development. In the early years, the health care system has a pivotal role to play, as it is the point of first contact and can serve as a gateway to other early childhood services. Disease prevention is a major component of reducing child mortality and immunization is a proven tool for controlling and even eradicating disease, yet there are over 1.2 million children in Latin American who do not receive routine vaccinations before their first birthday which is considered among the most cost-effective of health investments.