Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria
Data from the 2016–17 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey from Nigeria are used to study the relationship between child stature, mother’s years of education, and indicators of early childhood development (ECD). The relationships are contrasted between two empirical approaches: the conventional approac...
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crplos:10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 2024-05-19T07:39:27+00:00 Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja Goli, Srinivas 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 en eng Public Library of Science (PLoS) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 12, page e0260937 ISSN 1932-6203 journal-article 2021 crplos https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 2024-05-01T07:04:27Z Data from the 2016–17 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey from Nigeria are used to study the relationship between child stature, mother’s years of education, and indicators of early childhood development (ECD). The relationships are contrasted between two empirical approaches: the conventional approach whereby control variables are selected in an ad-hoc manner, and the double machine-learning (DML) approach that employs data-driven methods to select controls from a much wider set of variables and thus reducing potential omitted variable bias. Overall, the analysis confirms that maternal education and the incidence of chronic malnutrition have a significant direct effect on measures of early childhood development. The point estimates based on the ad-hoc specification tend to be larger in absolute value than those based on the DML specification. Frequently, the point estimates based on the ad-hoc specification fall inside the confidence interval of the DML point estimates, suggesting that in these cases the omitted variable bias is not serious enough to prevent making causal inferences based on the ad-hoc specification. However, there are instances where the omitted variable bias is sufficiently large for the ad hoc specification to yield a statistically significant relationship when in fact the more robust DML specification suggests there is none. The DML approach also reveals a more complex picture that highlights the role of context. In rural areas, mother’s education affects early childhood development both directly and indirectly through its impact on the nutritional status of both older and younger children. In contrast, in urban areas, where the average level of maternal education is much higher, increases in a mother’s education have only a direct effect on child ECD measures but no indirect effect through child nutrition. Thus, DML provides a practical and feasible approach to reducing threats to internal validity for robust inferences and policy design based on observational data. Article in Journal/Newspaper DML PLOS PLOS ONE 16 12 e0260937 |
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Data from the 2016–17 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey from Nigeria are used to study the relationship between child stature, mother’s years of education, and indicators of early childhood development (ECD). The relationships are contrasted between two empirical approaches: the conventional approach whereby control variables are selected in an ad-hoc manner, and the double machine-learning (DML) approach that employs data-driven methods to select controls from a much wider set of variables and thus reducing potential omitted variable bias. Overall, the analysis confirms that maternal education and the incidence of chronic malnutrition have a significant direct effect on measures of early childhood development. The point estimates based on the ad-hoc specification tend to be larger in absolute value than those based on the DML specification. Frequently, the point estimates based on the ad-hoc specification fall inside the confidence interval of the DML point estimates, suggesting that in these cases the omitted variable bias is not serious enough to prevent making causal inferences based on the ad-hoc specification. However, there are instances where the omitted variable bias is sufficiently large for the ad hoc specification to yield a statistically significant relationship when in fact the more robust DML specification suggests there is none. The DML approach also reveals a more complex picture that highlights the role of context. In rural areas, mother’s education affects early childhood development both directly and indirectly through its impact on the nutritional status of both older and younger children. In contrast, in urban areas, where the average level of maternal education is much higher, increases in a mother’s education have only a direct effect on child ECD measures but no indirect effect through child nutrition. Thus, DML provides a practical and feasible approach to reducing threats to internal validity for robust inferences and policy design based on observational data. |
author2 |
Goli, Srinivas |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja |
spellingShingle |
Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
author_facet |
Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja |
author_sort |
Skoufias, Emmanuel |
title |
Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
title_short |
Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
title_full |
Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
title_fullStr |
Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
title_full_unstemmed |
Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
title_sort |
child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in nigeria |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 |
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DML |
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DML |
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PLOS ONE volume 16, issue 12, page e0260937 ISSN 1932-6203 |
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 |
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