Young Lives is an international longitudinal study of childhood poverty in Ethiopia,
India (the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Peru and Vietnam. It combines data
collection at the household-level (carried out in 2002, 2006, 2009, 2013/14 and planned for
2016), with longitudinal qualitative research and a newly introduced nested school survey
(since 2010).
In Ethiopia, Young Lives has been following 3,000 children in two age cohorts since 2002
(1,000 children age 7-8 in 2002 and 2,000 children age 6-18 months in 2002). These children
are spread across twenty purposively selected ‘sentinel sites’ which are broadly illustrative of
the diversity of the country (Outes-Leon & Sanchez 2008). In addition to the longitudinal
household survey and qualitative work, Young Lives has conducted two school surveys in
Ethiopia.
The first of these school surveys, conducted in 2010, sought to add school level data to the
household panel, following a subsample of Young Lives children to their schools. The second
school survey, conducted in the 2012-13 academic year, sought to provide evidence on the
school, class, teacher and pupil level factors that help or hinder children’s learning of core
curricular domains over the course of grade 4 and grade 5. To this end a key feature of its
design was assessments of children’s competency in maths and reading comprehension,
linked to the Ministry of Education’s Minimum Learning Competencies and building on
existing assessments of learning in Ethiopia e.g. the USAID-funded Early Grade Reading
Assessment (USAID 2010), as well as Young Lives’ household surveys. These tests took
place at both the beginning and end of the 2012-13 school year (wave 1 and wave 2), with the
aim of enabling value-added analysis.