Socioeconomic Disparities for Early Childhood Anthropometrics and Vocabulary and Socio-emotional Skills: Dynamic Evidence from Chilean Longitudinal Data

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of socioeconomic (SES) disparities on anthropometrics, receptive vocabulary skills, and socio-emotional skills in Chilean children 31–83 months old (n = 7744). Longitudinal data allow for the estimation of dynamic models of child growth and skill formation while adjusting for mother's schooling and cognitive ability. The results show small length differences at birth with the better-off being shorter, but these differences are reversed during the first 10 months of life, at which age SES disparities in height-for-age z scores (HAZ) favored the better-off. Disparities in receptive vocabulary skills found at 30 months continue until the child is at least 6 years old. For socio-emotional skills, we found SES disparities before 72 months, but not after. Our results indicate that—even after controlling for factors that are not usually considered in the literature, such as mother's cognitive ability and lagged skills—SES remains significantly associated with child development outcomes within a dynamic context.