Child well-being matters for both ethical and economic reasons as children who flourish in the early years are more likely to become healthy, productive citizens later in life. This year’s edition of Development in the Americas (DIA) focuses on the well-being of children from conception to 8 years of age and makes the case for public intervention in improving child outcomes. The process of child development—physical, communicational, cognitive, and socio-emotional— does not unfold on its own, but is shaped by the experiences children accumulate at home, in daycare centers, and at school. Parents, relatives, other caregivers, teachers, and government all have a hand in shaping those experiences. This book offers suggestions for public policy to improve those experiences in ways that would certainly shape children’s lives and the face of the societies they live in for years to come.

Click here to access the data: https://mydata.iadb.org/d/sg6f-m5te

The Population and Housing Censuses database contains the censuses harmonized in such a way as to provide comparable census information over time and across countries. The variables in these databases are constructed under a common approach and structure, with standardized names, definitions, and disaggregations, and stored in a single file for each country. Currently, the harmonization of Population and Housing Censuses includes databases for 22 countries.

The indicators are categorized into seven themes: demographics, education, labor market, housing, income, migration, and diversity. When possible, we add multiple disaggregations for indicators. The available disaggregations are ethnicity, gender, age, education level, and area of geographic residence.

The management and harmonization of this database are provided by the Social Sector (SCL) of the Vice Presidency of Knowledge and Sectors to strengthen the analytical content of projects and studies.

Household Survey Indicators is a diverse dataset of social indicators designed to capture social conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The indicators are derived from national household survey data, covering 21 countries from 1990 to date. While the Sociómetro includes traditional global indicators, the database also includes tailor-made indicators in five areas: Demographics, Education, Labor Market, Housing, and Income, to better capture conditions in LAC.

Moreover, unlike traditional aggregate indicators, the Sociómetro indicators are disaggregated by ethnicity and race (when available) in addition to being disaggregated by gender, geographic residence, education, and income quintile.

The management and implementation of the Sociómetro is provided by the Social Sector (SCL) of the Vice Presidency of Knowledge and Sectors with the objective of strengthening the analytical content of projects and studies. The indicators are not intended to serve as official data for any particular country but instead aim to provide a comparable set of social indicators for the Latin American region.

This dataset contains information on 404 Centros infantiles del Buen Vivir (CIBVs), Ecuador's primary providers of public child care services for infant and toddlers at the time of data collection in 2012. In 2012, The Inter-American Development Bank administered a battery of widely-used instruments to measure the quality of child care services in the CIBVs, including four internationally-recognized quality instruments that were then adapted for use in Ecuador.

This dataset contains longitudinal data collected on child development outcomes, child characteristics, and parental and home characteristics on 937 children living in a representative sample of low- and low-middle-income households in Bogota, Colombia. The first round of data was collected in 2011 when 1,311 children ages 6-42 months were given the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley-III) by psychologists and were randomized to receive one of two batteries of short tests under survey conditions. In 2016, at 6-8 years, 940 of these children were found and given tests of IQ (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, WISC-V) and school achievement (arithmetic, reading, and vocabulary) by psychologists. These 937 children, excluding outliers, constitute the analysis sample of the paper Predictive validity in middle childhood of short tests of early childhood development used in large scale studies compared to the Bayley-III, the Family Care Indicators, height-for-age, and stunting: A longitudinal study in Bogota, Colombia by Marta Rubio-Codina and Sally Grantham-McGregor, forthcoming at PLOS ONE. The dataset was anonymized to protect subject privacy. Variable names and their labels are noted in the data description 2011-2016.xlsx at: https://idbg.sharepoint.com/teams/EZ-CO-TCP/CO-T1419/_layouts/15/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=EZSHARE-1012859252-8

This dataset contains information on Programa Nacional Cuna Más (Cuna Mas, hereinafter), Peru’s largest early childhood development program established in 2012. It focuses on one of the two services provided by Cuna Mas known as Servicio de Cuidado Diurno, a daycare service in marginalized urban areas that provides comprehensive care to children aged 6 to 36 months. Data were collected between November 2013 and January 2014 by the Inter-American Development Bank. The objective of the study was to estimate the association between caregiver quality and the development of very young children (6 to 24 months).

This dataset contains information on Programa Nacional Cuna Más (Cuna Mas, hereinafter), Peru’s largest early childhood development program established in 2012. It focuses on one of the two services provided by Cuna Mas known as Servicio de Acompanamiento a Familias (SAF), a home visiting program that operates in rural areas and provides one-hour weekly home visits to children aged 0-36 months and their caregiver.

The objective of the study was to compare different instruments to measure the quality of home visiting programs. Between August and October 2015, three instruments were administered to a sample of 554 children enrolled in Cuna Mas and receiving home visits at the time of data collection, and on their 176 home visitors who regularly work with 80 supervisors.

The following quality instruments were administered:
• Home Visit Rating Scale, version A+2 (HOVRS; Roggman et al. 2010)
• Home Visit Content and Characteristics Form (HVCCF; Boller et al. 2009)
• A supervisor checklist

The first two quality instruments are widely used among home visiting services in the United States. For each child in the sample, one home visit was filmed and the videos were later coded to create the scores, following the instruments’ manuals. The checklist, on the other hand, was designed based on record forms used by Cuna Mas and other home visiting programs in low- and middle- income countries, and was administered live during the visit by the home visitor’s supervisor.

The final, multilevel dataset includes:
• 554 visits with an identical number of distinct children
• 176 home visitors
• 80 supervisors •

Methodology available at: https://idbg.sharepoint.com/teams/EZ-RG-ESW/RG-K1423/25%20Results%20Management/Publicaciones%20-%20Base%20de%20Datos/measuring-quality-and-characterizing-cuna-mas-home-visits.pdf