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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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8700053 2023-05-15T16:01:19+02:00 Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja 2021-12-23 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700053/ https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700053/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 © 2021 Skoufias, Vinha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY PLoS One Research Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 2021-12-26T01:54:12Z 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. Text DML PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 16 12 e0260937 |
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Research Article Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja Child stature, maternal education, and early childhood development in Nigeria |
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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. |
format |
Text |
author |
Skoufias, Emmanuel Vinha, Katja |
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 |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700053/ https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 |
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DML |
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DML |
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PLoS One |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8700053/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 |
op_rights |
© 2021 Skoufias, Vinha https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260937 |
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