1. family and parenting
2. children

CENTER FOR THE ECONOMICS
OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
The Rural Education and Child Health project (ChinaREACH)
is a groundbreaking early childhood randomized control
trial designed to evaluate the joint impact of China’s
Children Nutrition Improvement Project in Poverty-stricken
Areas (CNNIP) and the Jamaica Parenting and Psychosocial
Stimulation Curriculum. Improved developmental outcomes
for rural children—including health, cognitive and socialemotional skills—anticipated by ChinaREACH will serve
to inform China’s national and provincial government and
encourage a new National Health and Parenting policy.
BACKGROUND 背景
There is notable inequality of family resources in China’s
rural and urban centers. Rates of malnutrition for rural
children are approximately 3-4 times those of urban
children. In China’s 680 high-poverty counties, an
estimated 61 million “left-behind children” are at risk,
as one or both parents migrate to urban centers for
employment.1 Rural children living in two-parent farming
families suffer from further decreased family investment,
deprived of income offered by urban wages. Gaps in
children’s cognitive and social-emotional development
across families of different income levels are associated
with household environments and parenting practices.
Early interventions can partially remediate these deficits.
Later interventions are much less effective.
ONE SOLUTION: NUTRITION 一个方案: 营养
Evidence suggests that China’s rural population exhibits
a lack of knowledge for children’s nutritional needs,
resulting in misguided infant and toddler feeding
practices. To mitigate long-term developmental impacts
of malnutrition during early childhood, China launched
the CNNIP in 2012 to provide universal, free nutritional
supplements to all children aged 6-24 months in poverty
counties. China’s policymakers were influenced by the
China Development Research Foundation’s pilot studies
on nutrition under the leadership of Dr. Lu Mai. Girls and
ethnic minorities are expected to benefit most from CNNIP.
INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL
COLLABORATION 全球跨界合作
ChinaREACH is an international collaboration between
Dr. Lu Mai’s team at the China Development Research
Foundation (CDRF), Professor Yu Xie of the Center for
Social Research and Institute of Social Science Surveys
at Peking University (PKU), and Nobel laureate Professor
James J. Heckman’s team at the University of Chicago’s
Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD).
1. China Development Research Foundation. 2014. “Child development in rural areas.” In
Demographic Developments in China. Routledge.
2. Gertler, Paul, James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, Arianna Zanolini, Christel Vermeersch, Susan
Walker, Susan M. Chang, and Sally Grantham-McGregor. “Labor market returns to an early
childhood stimulation intervention in Jamaica.”Science 344, no. 6187 (2014): 998-1001.
AN IMPROVED SOLUTION:
NUTRITION + PARENTING
一个更好的方案: 营养+育儿理念
ChinaREACH will pilot a culturally adapted version of the
Jamaica parenting program with more than 800 families
of children aged 6 to 36 months, randomly selected
throughout Huachi County in Gansu Province. Under the
guidance of Dr. Heckman’s team, ChinaREACH will evaluate
CNNIP with an added home visiting parenting intervention
designed to improve caregiver knowledge of early child
development and aspects of adult-child interaction
that enhance children’s cognitive and social-emotional
development. The well-evidenced Jamaica program was
designed by Professor Sally Grantham-McGregor and her
colleagues at the University College London to improve
parenting skills by emphasizing psychosocial stimulation
for children’s learning within a warm, supportive home
environment. A recent follow-up conducted twenty years
after the original Jamaica study demonstrates large effects
on average earnings, with increases of 25% for treated
participants as compared to controls.2
ChinaREACH: STAGE 1 慧育中国: 第一步
In 2014, the impact evaluation pilot study design was
finalized. The Jamaica parenting curriculum was selected
and adapted for rural Huachi County, as was a large-scale
demographic survey and early childhood instruments to
assess children’s health, overall development, adult-child
relationships, social, emotional, and cognitive support in
the home environment. In early 2015, baseline data will be
collected using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (3rd
ed.), NCAST Parent-Child Teaching Scale, Home Observation
for Measurement of the Environment, and anthropometrics.
By mid-2015, the home visiting treatment will begin.
Not Stunted
Stunted-Stimulation
Stunted-No Stimulation
0.4
0.2
0.0
-0.2
-0.6
WAIS
(17-18 yrs.)
-0.4
WISC-R
(11-12 yrs.)
As the enriched caregiving intervention is targeted to
parents or caregivers of infants and toddlers, there are
specific goals pertaining to changes in the caregivers’
behavior, their knowledge of child development, and
the relationship between caregiver and child. Warm,
supportive adult-child interaction is a key ingredient for
children’s cognitive and social-emotional development.
Compliance of caregiver engagement in parenting
education sessions must be established to promote
increased frequency of positive adult–child interactions
and decreased neglect, abuse, or harsh discipline.
0.8
0.6
Stanford-Binet
(7-8 yrs.)
PARENTING AND CAREGIVER-CHILD
INTERACTION OUTCOMES
家长或孩子照看者和儿童之间的沟通程度
THE JAMAICA STUDY: LONG-TERM COGNITIVE BENEFITS
长期的认知优势
Griffiths
(33-48 mths.)
ChinaREACH seeks to promote optimal health, cognitive,
and social-emotional outcomes for children related
to school readiness and life-long achievement. Health
outcomes include reduced stunting and wasting, reduced
incidence of anemia, and reduced injury rates for children.
Cognitive and social-emotional outcomes include
evidence of self-regulation, determination, resilience,
and motivation for learning, the ability to care for others
and resolve peer conflicts, and reduced internalizing/
externalizing behaviors.
We expect to increase global knowledge of cultural
parenting practices in China, such as the socialization
of interdependence and filial piety. By creating a welltrained team of home visiting parenting educators that
demonstrate fidelity to the intervention curriculum model,
ChinaREACH further promises to strengthen labor capital
and community resources in China’s rural towns and
villages that are invested in early childhood development.
Grifiths on
enrollment
(9-24 mths.)
CHILD OUTCOMES 儿童成长指标
COMMUNITY OUTCOMES
社区的投入和支持度
SD SCORE
Goals of this project include the full scale up of national
combined parenting and nutrition programs throughout
rural China, with policy adaptation to follow.
DQ or IQ scores of stunted and non-stunted Jamaican children from age 9–24 months
to 17–18. Figure shows long-term deficits associated with stunting and the sustained
benefits to stunted children who received a home-visiting programme providing early
childhood stimulation. WISC-R=Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—revised.
WAIS=Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Reproduced with permission from Walker SP,
Chang SM, Powell CA, Grantham-McGregor SM. Effects of early childhood psychosocial
stimulation and nutritional supplementation on cognition and education in growthstunted Jamaican children: prospective cohort study. Lancet 2005; 366: 1804–07.
PROJECT PARTNERS
The Center for the Economics of Human
Development (CEHD)’s mission is to
advance knowledge that fosters human
flourishing by identifying sources of
CENTER FOR THE ECONOMICS
OF disadvantage
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
and promoting equality of opportunity. The
Center produces empirical and theoretical research that
integrates ideas and methods across the social and natural
sciences to create rigorous evidence for public policy. Dr.
Heckman’s research team at the University of Chicago
will oversee, guide, and direct the design of ChinaREACH,
including the analysis of power with multiple hypotheses.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
The Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global
Working Group (HCEO) at the University
of Chicago, co-directed by Dr. James
J. Heckman, is an interdisciplinary
collaboration of over 400 researchers,
educators, and policymakers from across
the globe focused on human capital
development and its impact on opportunity inequality.
HCEO members, including Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and
Sally Grantham-McGregor, will advise the treatment and
evaluation of ChinaREACH.
cehd.uchicago.edu
The China Development Research
Foundation (CDRF), led by Dr. Lu Mai,
is a nationwide organization initiated by
the Development Research Center of the
State Council. CDRF raises private-sector
funds to conduct impact evaluations with
the goal of shaping policy. CDRF’s pilot tests of nutritional
and kindergarten interventions in impoverished counties
of Qinghai and Yunnan provinces provided evidence for
building consensus on ECD within the Chinese Government,
and eventually led to China’s National Nutrition Improvement
Program (CNNIP). CDRF will implement and manage the
parenting and nutrition intervention within the field.
Peking University’s Center for Social Research (CSR),
founded by Dr. Yu Xie, is a premier research center
dedicated to conducting empirical sociological research
on contemporary China. In collaboration with Peking
University’s Institute for Social Science Survey, CSR will
provide unique technical expertise in collecting and
analyzing large-scale data sets in rural China. Dr. Yu Xie
will oversee the design, implementation, and analysis of a
large-scale demographic survey for ChinaREACH.
芝加哥大学