From Infancy to Adolescence: Growing-Up in Poverty Kirrily Pells Young Lives, University of Oxford 21 May 2015.

From Infancy to Adolescence: Growing-Up in Poverty

Kirrily Pells

Young Lives, University of Oxford

21 May 2015

TAKING A LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE: WHY A FOCUS ON ADOLESCENCE?

• Individual level: adolescence is a key developmental phase shaped by earlier circumstances and current risks and opportunities embedded in the surrounding environment

• Societal level: with one in four Indians aged 10-19 years old: young people are a demographic dividend

• Future generations: • “Adolescence is the pivotal decade when poverty

and inequity often pass to the next generation as poor adolescent girls give birth to impoverished children.” (UNICEF 2011: 3)

• How and why do young people’s trajectories diverge during adolescence?

HIGH HOPES FOR THE FUTURE: ASPIRATIONS FOR SCHOOL, WORK AND

FERTILITY • Children and young people want to study for longer,

obtain more highly skilled and better paid jobs and marry and have children later than their parents’ generation:

“You get better jobs if you study and you have a better life and can marry an educated husband ... We see our parents working and we feel that we do not want to be like them.” (Harika, aged 16 years, rural Telangana)

• Between 75% (Ethiopia) and 92% (Peru) of children aspired to vocational training or higher (post-school) education at the age of 12. Remain high at age 15 and 19.

• Young people want to delay starting families. 19 year-olds think the best time to have children is between 25 (AP) and 27 (Peru and Vietnam) for men and between 21 (AP) and 26 for women (Peru).

MANY YOUNG PEOPLE ARE STILL STUDYING BUT INEQUALITIES IN WHO CONTINUES

AND SOME HAVE MADE SLOW PROGRESS THROUGH SCHOOL

• Many young people are still studying at age 19 but there are clear inequalities in who continues and some have made slow progress through school.

• Between 45% (Peru) and 59% (Ethiopia) report still studying in some form, often combining study with paid work.

• Slow progression: in India, 49% are still studying but of these young people 1/5 still had not completed secondary school.

• Inequalities in who is studying: Young people from rural areas, from marginalised social groups, and those in families with the lowest education levels have less chance of remaining in education and training.

DIFFERENCES IN ENROLMENT BETWEEN THE POOREST AND THE LEAST POOR CHILDREN

DIFFERENCES IN ENROLMENT BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS

DECISION-MAKING OVER WHO STAYS IN SCHOOL SHAPED BY ECONOMIC PRESSURES,

INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES AND SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT

• Investment decisions start young but widen during adolescence: “Shanmuka Priya is a girl: we won’t give her higher education. And in the case of Prashant, we will make him study as much as we can. We want our only son to get a good education. We have up to tenth grade in the village school for Shanmuka Priya. We will see what happens after that.” (Mother)

Yaswanth, 15 years old wants to continue studying and go to university, but he says, “I am getting afraid whether or not I may complete or not my tenth class.” His sister has recently married and his mother incurred debts in order to pay for her dowry. His mother “struggled, worked hard and took care of me and my sister” but his father died when Yaswanth was young and he feels responsible for supporting his mother. Yaswanth describes being afraid of asking his teachers for help because they beat the pupils.

EARLY MARRIAGE AND CHILDBEARING REFLECT AND REPRODUCE EARLIER

INEQUALITIES • By age 19: 37% of girls in AP, 25% in Peru, 19% in

Vietnam and 13% in Ethiopia had married or cohabited.

• In AP and Ethiopia, many girls who had married had done so below the legal age for marriage (an average of 16.7 years in Ethiopia and 16.5 years in AP).

• By age 19: 9% (Ethiopia); 12% (girls) 21% (AP) and 24% (Peru) of young women had given birth.

• Poorer girls and those living in rural areas are more likely to have married and had babies. In AP:– 46% girls from the poorest households were married by 19– 44% of married girls’ mothers had no formal education – Most of girls who already had children had already left school

and more than half had only completed primary level school– Unmarried young women aged 18-19 are 10 times more

likely to be studying than those who are married

CAPITIALIZING ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY

“Lasting change in the lives of children and young people, a critical underlying motivation of the Millennium Declaration can only be achieved and sustained by complementing investments in the first decade of life with greater attention and resources applied to the second” (UNICEF, 2011)

•Creation of jobs and economic opportunities for a newly educated generation; development of relevant skills•Delaying marriage and childbirth: tackling poverty, social norms and limited opportunities for girls •Stronger ‘adolescent-friendly’ health services

CAPITIALIZING ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY (I)

• Pillar 1: Supporting households to invest in children and young peopleTackle household poverty: extend the coverage of social protection Reduce risk and build strong preventative and curative health services

• Pillar 2: Getting the foundation right: from 0-8 years Prioritise investments in health and learning: extend coverage and quality of ECCE

Extend the reach of social protection to households with very young children

• Pillar 3: Sustaining healthy development: from 9-12 years

Improve the equity and quality of schooling Supporting children who have fallen behind

CAPITIALIZING ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY (II)

• Pillar 4: Supporting transitions through adolescence: from 13-19 years Creation of jobs and economic opportunities Delaying marriage and childbirth

• Pillar 5: Leaving No-One Behind:

multidimensional approaches to reach the most disadvantaged Cross-cutting focus on equity Multidimensional approaches to children and adolescents’ development