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New Young Lives book examines how poverty affects children's well-being and development and how policy can help

A new book from Young Lives draws on over 15 years of research to explore how poverty shapes children’s wellbeing and development and how data can inform social policy and practice approaches to improving outcomes for poorer children.

Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 children growing up in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over the past 15 years, the book draws on evidence on two cohorts of children, from 1 to 15 and from 8 to 22.

It examines how poverty affects children’s development in low- and middle-income countries, and how policy has been used to improve their lives, then goes on to show when key developmental differences occur.

It uses new evidence to develop a framework of what matters most and when and outlines effective policy approaches to inform the Sustainable Development Goals' 'no-one left behind' agenda.

The book is available Open Access under a CC-BY-NC licence.

Jo Boyden, Andrew Dawes, Paul Dornan and Colin Tredoux (2019) Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty: Evidence from the Young Lives Study in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam, Policy Press