Early Childhood Development (ECD)

Investing in the early years is one of the smartest things a country can do to eliminate extreme poverty, boost shared prosperity, and create the human capital needed for economies to diversify and grow. Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development – affecting learning, health, behavior, and, ultimately, productivity and income.

Yet today, millions of young children are not reaching their full potential because of inadequate nutrition, lack of early stimulation, learning, and nurturing care, and exposure to stress adversely affecting their development.

The challenge is substantial:

In low- and middle-income countries across the world, 148 million children under the age of five are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential because of poverty and stunting (or low height for age).

Worldwide, nearly half of all three to six-year-olds are not enrolled in pre-primary education. In low-income countries, just one-in-five children has access to preschool.

There are 17.5 million child refugees and asylum seekers and another 25.8 million children internally displaced, exposing them to the kind of stress that can undermine their development.

Around the world, over 40 percent of children below primary-school-entry age – or nearly 350 million children – need childcare, but do not have access to it.

Smart investments in foundational learning, the physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional development of young children – from before birth until they transition to primary school – are critical to put them on the path to jobs and greater prosperity, help countries be more productive, and compete more successfully in a rapidly changing global economy.

A large body of evidence confirms that if we invest in high-quality programs that support children’s health, nutrition, and early learning, we can improve learning outcomes, and ultimately increase adult wages and productivity.

In response to evidence showing the benefits of investing in young children, as well as growing demand from countries, the World Bank is increasing its support of early childhood development (ECD) initiatives around the world through financing, policy advice, technical support, and partnerships at the country, regional, and global levels.

The 2018 World Development Report “Learning to Realize Education’s Promise” highlights three approaches:

Targeting mothers and their babies with health and nutrition interventions during the first 1,000 days, a critical period of brain development.

Increasing the frequency and quality of stimulation and opportunities for home learning to improve cognitive, socio-emotional, and language development.

Ensuring high-quality childcare centers for young children and preschool programs for children 3 to 6 years old.

The World Bank leverages experts from education and skills development, nutrition, health, and social protection to build an evidence base, so that countries can craft cost-effective programs that fit their needs. The World Bank is contributing to global knowledge around early childhood, highlighting new scientific evidence, building on existing findings, and proposing pathways for implementation of early childhood development at-scale.

Expanding measurement is a key pillar of the Bank’s Human Capital Project and its efforts to reduce learning poverty. We are dramatically scaling up our efforts to measure early childhood outcomes and the quality of early learning environments; building country capacity; and working towards the generation of globally comparable data on early childhood development, learning, and education quality. By taking a more coordinated and strategic approach across countries, the World Bank can improve and scale up ECD measurement globally, fill current knowledge gaps, and promote cross-country learning and synergies.

The World Bank team has developed a suite of tools to measure childhood development and early learning quality, including the Anchor Items for Measuring Early Childhood Development, a core set of items for measuring preschoolers’ early literacy, early numeracy, executive functioning, and socioemotional development; Teach ECE, an observation tool that captures the quality of teacher-child interactions in preschools; and COACH, an initiative to improve in-service teacher professional development and systems to accelerate learning.

Expanding access to quality reading and learning materials

Too many children are growing up without books. Only 2 percent of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa are growing up with three or more children’s books in their homes. The Read@Home Initiative aims to change that.

Preschool and childcare

The World Bank's support for early childhood development includes ensuring high-quality childcare centers for young children and preschool programs for children 3 to 6 years old.

Nutrition interventions in early childhood pay dividends

For every dollar invested in addressing undernutrition, a return of $23 is expected. These economic benefits far outweigh the costs of inaction. Nutrition interventions in early childhood have far-reaching impacts on human capital and long-term economic outcomes.

Education & Skills

Education and skills training are the bridge between human potential and economic opportunity.

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