Follow-up of Parenting and Unconditional Cash on Children's Development at Middle Childhood

It is estimated that 250 million children do not reach their potential due to poverty, inadequate stimulation and associated risk factors in low and middle income countries. Although early years (0-3 years) are very important for brain development of a child, some factors including extreme poverty, stunting, lack of psychosocial stimulation and safety net are barriers for their smooth development. The early intervention e.g. psychosocial stimulation returns maximum of investment at this age (0-3 years) because the stimulation and interaction with caregivers increases neuronal connections in children's brains. Investment in health and education has been documented as a way to improve human capital and rapid economic growth. Intervention in early age has the highest returns in adult life. Indeed, early years investment in children is a unique window of opportunity to improve individual, community, and societal outcomes as a whole.

More than half of the Bangladeshi children <5 years are at risk for developmental delay due to poverty and sub-optimal home stimulation. Sometimes poor people become poorer due to catastrophic expenditure on health care and fall into the vicious cycle of poverty. Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWCA), Government of Bangladesh (GOB) introduced maternity allowance in the fiscal year 2007-2008. This is an unconditional cash transfer under safety net program for the poor mothers. The overall objective of the cash program is to ensure safety net in terms of morbidity, mortality and welfare during pregnancy and lactation period for both mother and child.

Parenting alone and along with other health and nutrition programs was found to be effective for children's cognition and behavior. Conditional and unconditional cash transfer to the poor mothers has proved a way of reducing poverty and improving health outcomes for mothers and children worldwide. Conditional cash transfer (CCT) alone was also found significantly effective for child development in Mexico. On the other hand, studies reported that unconditional cash transfer (UCT) improved other health outcomes and nutrition.

There is a constitutional obligation of government of Bangladesh (GoB) to ensure public health and nutrition, especially for disadvantages people. GoB is a signatory and ratified country of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Through this ratification GoB has given mandate to serve the needs of children in the country. GoB developed health policy and national children policy emphasizing health care for the disadvantages and the poor. MoWCA revised 'the National Child Policy 1994' in 2011. The first aim and objective of 'the National Children Policy 2011' is to ensure best child development and growth of the children in the country irrespective of any economic, social, gender and geographical barriers. The present study completely is aligned with the Children Policy 2011.

Urban population is about 28% and it is expected to rise to more than 40% by 2030. In fact, urbanization in Bangladesh is rapidly growing but is not well planned. Poor urban women and children are vulnerable in terms of health and education.