Browsing by Author "Cruz, Janna Isabella S."

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    How does non-maternal care affect children's physical and cognitive development?
    (2024-01-19) Cruz, Janna Isabella S.; Uy, Fiona Leigh
    In the Philippines, non-maternal care has become a prevalent child care option for mothers, mainly for the purposes of pursuing employment after childbirth or simply for receiving additional support in caregiving. Given this, there is a need to explore whether this type of care poses any specific positive or negative effects on child outcomes. This study uses data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS) to examine the effect of non-maternal child care on physical and cognitive development of children (n=1,638) aged 10-12 years old, through measures of body mass index and test scores in nonverbal reasoning, mathematical ability, English reading ability, and native language (Cebuano) reading ability. We investigate the effects of non-maternal care on child outcomes using various propensity score matching (PSM) algorithms. Results showed that non-maternal care has detrimental effects on children’s native language test scores. These findings are consistent across all four matching types. It was revealed that non-maternal care has a negative impact on mathematics test scores, however these findings are robust to nearest n-neighbor and radius with caliper matching methods alone. We find no significant link between non-maternal care and children’s body mass index and test scores in English and nonverbal reasoning. This study addresses the lack of non-maternal care research in the Philippines as well as the lack of studies on non-maternal care that study children later into their childhood.