SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being | SDG 4: Quality Education | SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare | Ministry of Women and Child Development
The Development Asia article, Measuring Little Lives, highlights a critical “visibility crisis” in early childhood development (ECD) across Asia and the Pacific. While the science confirming that 90% of the adult brain develops by age five is well-established, millions of children remain absent from national data systems and policy dashboards. This lack of data results in ECD remaining at the margins of fiscal decisions and national priorities.
The report identifies several systemic challenges to effective measurement:
Multidimensional Complexity: ECD responsibility is fragmented across health, education, and social protection sectors, leading to a lack of institutional accountability.
Data Gaps: National surveys are often conducted only every five to seven years, which is too infrequent to inform timely interventions before children transition to primary school.
Home-Based Outcomes: Milestones like secure attachment and early stimulation occur in private settings, making them difficult to quantify compared to institutional data like school enrollment.
What is the Nurturing Care Framework? Developed by the WHO and UNICEF, it is a global roadmap for supporting the healthy development of children from pregnancy to age five. It emphasizes five strategic pillars: good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, opportunities for early learning, and security and safety, providing a structured way for governments to measure and fund early childhood interventions.
Policy Relevance
The article highlights India’s Meghalaya Early Childhood Development Mission as a standout model of multisectoral data integration—linking maternal, nutrition, and childcare indicators across departments—which other states and national frameworks could emulate to make ECD visible in routine monitoring. This approach demonstrates how embedding developmental milestones into health, education, and social protection systems can enable early detection of delays, target interventions equitably across socio-economic groups, and elevate ECD from policy margins to fiscal priorities, unlocking long-term human capital gains.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How can the Government of India scale the Meghalaya ECD Mission model to other states to ensure that early childhood visibility is institutionalized as a core governance priority?
Follow the full news here: Measuring Little Lives: Building Asia’s Human Capital