Risks to Child Development and School Readiness among Children under Six in Pakistan :Findings from a Nationally Representative Phone Survey

This paper analyzes the risks to child development and school readiness among children underage 6 in Pakistan. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey conducted between December 2021 andFebruary 2022, it presents the first nationally representative estimates of child development for childrenunder 3 years of age and school readiness for children 3 to 6 years of age, using internationally validated instruments.The paper examines how risk factors such as parental distress, lack of psychosocial stimulation, food insecurity,low maternal education, no enrollment in early childhood education, and living in a rural area are associated withchildren’s outcomes. The data indicate that more than half (57 percent) of parents with children under age 3 weredistressed and that 61 percent of households reported cutting down on the size of or skipping meals since thestart of the pandemic. The data reveal that over half of parents fail to engage in adequate psychosocial stimulationwith their child and enrollment in early childhood education is very low (39 percent). The paper finds that childdevelopment outcomes decline rapidly as the number of risks increase. Specifically, for children under 3 years, lack ofpsychosocial stimulation at home and higher levels of parental distress were most significantly associated withlower child development levels. For a child aged 3 to 6 years, early childhood education enrollment and the amountof psychosocial stimulation the child receives at home had the strongest association with school readiness scores.