The Effect of Maternal Migration on Early Childhood Development in Rural China

This paper investigates the relationships between caregivers’ parenting knowledge and early childhood development, based on a survey conducted in 1715 rural households in 100 villages located in an undeveloped rural area of western China. The results find that, first, caregivers’ parenting knowledge is positively and significantly associated with children’s development outcomes, including cognitive, language, motor, and social–emotional development; second, caregivers’ parental investments significantly mediate the link between parenting knowledge and early childhood development; third, in contrast with other parental investments, play materials (in terms of variety and quantity) and play activities in the households are the strongest mediators. Our findings might be informative for policy makers to design policies targeted to foster human capital formation in rural China.

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Does paternal involvement matter for early childhood development in rural China?

Applied Developmental Science ◽

10.1080/10888691.2021.1990061 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-25

Author(s):

Lei Wang ◽

Hui Li ◽

Sarah-Eve Dill ◽

Siqi Zhang ◽

Scott Rozelle

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Development ◽

Rural China ◽

Paternal Involvement ◽

Childhood Development

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Parental Migration and Early Childhood Development in Rural China

Demography ◽

10.1007/s13524-019-00849-4 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 57 (2) ◽

pp. 403-422 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Ai Yue ◽

Yu Bai ◽

Yaojiang Shi ◽

Renfu Luo ◽

Scott Rozelle ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Development ◽

Rural China ◽

Childhood Development ◽

Parental Migration

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An Intelligent and Data Driven Mobile Platform for Early Childhood Development using Machine Learning and Data Mining

10.5121/csit.2021.111616 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Maggie Ding ◽

Yu Sun

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Early Childhood Development ◽

Rural China ◽

Daily Intake ◽

Qualitative Evaluation ◽

Mobile App ◽

Childhood Development ◽

Nutritional Values ◽

Age Appropriate

In China almost 96 million children live in rural areas. Some of these children suffer from malnutrition since parents or guardians do not have knowledge of nutritional plans or how to calculate nutritional values. However, most of the Chinese population has access to a mobile device. This paper proposes a mobile application, which runs on the IOS and Android platforms, to calculate nutritional values and recommend a nutritional menu. EZ Nutrition and Education is a mobile app that targets millions of parents and caregivers in rural China and provides a solution to the regions’ early childhood underdevelopment problems. It provides recommendations for healthy meals and age-appropriate educational activities, measures children’s daily intake of calories and macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, and fats), and provides a way to have fun through activities that teach skills and values so as to prevent the underdevelopment of rural children’s physical, intellectual and mental growth. We applied our application to a group of participants (ages 6-12) and conducted a qualitative evaluation of the approach. The results show that the nutritional calculator feature can help parents improve the nutritional health of their children. Though two of the underweight participants lost weight and two of the overweight participants gained weight while using the recommended nutritional plan, we believe that the recommended nutritional menu could be an excellent feature for this application after we adjust some of the parameters since some parents claimed they could not follow the recommended menus.

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