Factors Contributing to Disparities in Early Child Development in Punjab, Pakistan: An In-depth Analysis Through National Survey

Despite the importance of early childhood development in enhancing economic returns and reducing societal costs related to poverty, crime, and poor health, Pakistan ranks low on the global early childhood development index. The province of Punjab, hosting over half of the country’s population, exhibits significant intra-province disparities in childhood development. Understanding the factors contributing to these disparities is critical to developing effective interventions. This study analyses disparities in early childhood development between southern Punjab and the rest of the province. Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey round 6 data for Punjab have been used to achieve the objective. The results of multivariate logistic regression indicate that the significant factors that affect early child development are the child’s region, age, gender, stunting, underweight, adult engagement with the child, number of books, different categories of mother’s education level, and different wealth status levels. Through Farlie’s decomposition, we analyzed that children in Southern Punjab are 11.35% less likely to be developmentally on track compared to the rest of Punjab. The wealth status contributes more than half (52.8%) to the difference, while the share of the mother’s education in the difference is 21%. Learning environment and nutritional status contribute 14.3% and 12%. Early child access to quality education, better health care, better nutrition, parental awareness programs, and income support for vulnerable communities can help to reduce regional early child development disparity.