Young Lives: Data Matching Series, 1900-2021

<div>The Young Lives study is an innovative long-term project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in four developing countries. The study is being conducted in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam and has tracked the lives of 12,000 children over 25 years, from infancy to adulthood, and through seven rounds of data collection. The five initial survey rounds (Round 1-5) were administered in person and were followed by Round 6, which consisted of five phone calls conducted in 2020 and 2021 as part of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Listening to Young Lives at Work: COVID-19 Phone Survey</span>. The latest in-person survey round, Round 7, was conducted in 2023 and 2024 in Ethiopia, Peru and India only.</div><div><br></div><div>Round 7 did not take place in Vietnam due to changes in governmental procedures on the international transfer of personal data. Additionally, during the data collection for Round 7, an armed conflict broke out in parts of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. For this reason, a shorter and simplified Round 7 questionnaire was conducted over the phone for those respondents who were living in the affected sites at the time of the Round 7 fieldwork. In total, 2,038 in-person interviews and 205 phone interviews were conducted in Ethiopia.</div><div><br>Round 1 of Young Lives was conducted in 2002 and surveyed two cohorts of children born seven years apart, aged 1 year old (Younger Cohort, YC) and 8 years old (Older Cohort, OC) at the time of the first survey round. Round 2 returned to the same children in 2006 when the YC and OC were aged 5 and 12 years old, respectively. Round 3 surveyed the same children again in 2009 at ages 8 years and 15 years, Round 4 surveyed them four years later in 2013 at the age of 12 and 19 years old, Round 5 took place in 2016 when the YC and OC were aged 15 and 22 years old, and Round 6 surveyed them in 2020-2021 at 19-20 and 26-27 years old. Round 7 took place in 2023 when the YC and OC participants were respectively 22 and 29 years old, with some of them becoming parents themselves.</div><div><br></div><div>The 2020 phone survey consists of three phone calls (Call 1 administered in June-July 2020; Call 2 in August-October 2020 and Call 3 in November-December 2020) and the 2021 phone survey consists of two additional phone calls (Call 4 in August 2021 and Call 5 in October-December 2021) The calls took place with each Young Lives respondent, across both the younger and older cohort, and in all four study countries (reaching an estimated total of around 11,000 young people).</div><div><br>The Young Lives survey is carried out by teams of local researchers, supported by the Principal Investigator and Data Manager in each country.<br><br>Further information about the survey, including publications, can be downloaded from the <a href="https://www.younglives.org.uk/" title="Young Lives" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Young Lives</a> website.</div><div><br></div>
<p><span style="font-style: italic;">Young Lives</span> research has expanded to explore linking geographical data collected during the rounds to external datasets. Matching <span style="font-style: italic;">Young Lives</span> data with administrative and geographic datasets significantly increases the scope for research in several areas, and may allow researchers to identify sources of exogenous variation for more convincing causal analysis on policy and/or early life circumstances. <br><br><span style="font-style: italic;">Young Lives: Data Matching Series, 1900-2021</span> includes the following linked datasets: <br><br>1. C<span style="font-style: italic;">limate Matched Datasets </span>(four YL study countries): Community-level GPS data has been matched with temperature and precipitation data from the University of Delaware. Climate variables are offered at the community level, with a panel data structure spanning across years and months. Hence, each community has a unique value of precipitation (variable PRCP) and temperature (variable TEMP), for each year and month pairing for the period 1900-2017. <br><br>2. <span style="font-style: italic;">COVID-19 Matched Dataset</span> (Peru only): The YL Phone Survey Calls data has been matched with external data sources (The Peruvian Ministry of Health and the National Information System of Deaths in Peru). The matched dataset includes the total number of COVID cases per 1,000 inhabitants, the total number of COVID deaths by district and per 1,000 inhabitants; the total number of excess deaths per 1,000 inhabitants and the number of lockdown days in each Young Lives district in Peru during August 2020 to December 2021.<br><br>Further information is available in the PDF reports included in the study documentation.</p>