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Child Development in Context

We investigate how, when, and for whom factors like physical punishment, parental stimulation, early childhood education, contextual violence, and other ecological influences impact child development.

Our work employs causal frameworks and a range of psychometric and econometric methods to address key developmental questions such as: (1) how contexts shape child development, (2) how human development, in turn, shapes these contexts, and (3) how to drive systemic transformations that enhance the ecologies and systems of human development

Related Publications

  • Cuartas, J. (2024). Estimating the association between spanking and early childhood development using between- and within-child analyses. Psychology of Violence, 14(2), 77–86. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000502
  • Cuartas, J., McCoy, D., *Sánchez, J., Behrman, J., Cappa, C., Donati, G., Heymann, J., Lu, C., Raikes, A., Rao, N., Richter, L., Stein, A., & Yoshikawa, H. (2023) Family play, reading, and other stimulation and early childhood development in five low-and-middle-income countries. Developmental Science, e13404. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13404
  • McCoy, D. C., Seiden, J., Cuartas, J., Pisani, L., & Waldman, M. (2022). Estimates of a multidimensional index of nurturing care in the next 1000 days of life for children in low-income and middle-income countries: a modelling study. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 6(5), 324-334. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00076-1
  • Cuartas, J. (2022). The effect of spanking on early social-emotional skills. Child Development, 93(1), 180-193. org/10.1111/cdev.13646