Research On The Correlation Between Birth Season And Early Development Of Infants And Toddlers

With the transformation of China's economic development model,more and more research began to pay attention to the problem of China's human capital quality of the future labour force.For our country,enhancing the human capital of rural area,especially poor rural area,is difficulty and important.The formation and development of human capital is the result of long-term accumulation,and it is significant to pay attention to development of the characteristics and lows of different stages of development to improve the quality of human capital in China.More and more research has proved the brain has undergone rapid development,synaptic pruning and myelin formation,which is essential to the realization of the future development potential of children,and is also the best development period for the most of the abilities(hearing,vision,language and cognition).The development of cognitive,linguistic and social emotional development ahs been differentiated in the early childhood,and can will predict the future academic performance of children and the income level when they get the adulthood.Long-term follow-up study found that the increase in nutrition,health and irritation of infants aged 0-3 years would have a positive impact on future life of infants,such as higher academic achievement,higher income,better health in adulthood and lower crime rates.The existing research found that there were lagging behind in cognition,motor development and other aspects of infants in poor rural western areas of China.This paper will start from the actual situation of infants in western poor rural areas of China,and explore the early childhood development of infants in poor rural areas and its influencing factors.The main objective of this paper is to explore the correlation between early childhood development of infants and their birth seasons in western poor rural areas in China.Then further explore the reasons behind the relationship between birth season and early childhood development,or what possible factors that cause this relationship.This paper uses the data collected by the Centre of Experimental Economics in Education of Shaanxi Normal University,the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,the China Agricultural Policy Research Center of Peking University,the Joint National Health Planning Committee Cadre Training Venter,the Shaanxi Provincial Health Planning Committee and the City Country Health Planning Department in April 2013 and October 2013.And our samples all come from 11 nationally designated poverty counties located in southern Shaanxi Province in northwest of China from Shangluo,Ankang and Hanzhong Provinces,which have been carried out in three poverty-stricken counties.Our study was conducted in two waves:the first wave was in April 2013,and the second wave was 6 months later,in October 2013.In each wave,we surveyed rural families with infants aged from 8 to 10 months old and finally we collected 650 infants from 174 townships 351 villages.Based on the basic situation of our country,this paper draws lessons from the widely used and the most advanced scale in the world.This study used to measure Early Childhood Development scale is Bayley ? test(BSID ?)scale,the BSID takes into consideration each infant's age in days,as well as whether he or she was a premature birth.The test contain two sub-indices,the Mental Development Index(MDI)which evaluates memory,habitation,problem solving,early number concepts,generalisation,classification,vocalisations and language to produce a measure of cognitive development;and Psychomotor Development Index(PDI)which evaluates gross muscle groups(rolling,crawling and creeping,sitting,standing,walking,running and jumping)and fine motor manipulation to produce a measure of psychomotor development.The test conducted by trained professionals using professional props and children,our professional staff will then according to the performance of children in the whole process to give children.After the end of the Bailey test,our professionals will be based on their own scores for the child to calculate a score,which indicates that the child's current level of development.In addition,a professional student of Medical School of Xi'an Jiao Tong University as a nurse gave a simple physical examination for infants and their parents.The contents of physical examination include height,weight and haemoglobin.The form of physical examination would record the caregivers of infants during physical examination,the altitude and pressure of the homes of infants.And this paper also uses a statistical method to deal with the data in the investigation and analysis,using STATA 14.0 software for independent sample t test and multiple linear regression analysis.In the descriptive statistical analysis,the percentage and the mean value were used as the dependent variable in the multiple linear regression analysis.In linear regression analysis,the independent variable was the birth season of infant,the dependent variables are the early childhood development results which include haemoglobin,cognitive development index and psychomotor development index;the control variables include infants' gender and age,whether the infants were premature or not,and the maternal age and maternal educational level,and whether the family receive minimum living standard guarantee payments.As predicted,we found that infants who were born during the winter months,as a group,Hb concentrations,MDI score and PDI score were significantly higher than summer group.More precisely,our analysis shows that being born in winter is associated with a 3.6 g/L(t=3.63,p<0.001)rise in Hb concentration,a 7.1 points rise in MDI score(t =5.17,p<0.001)and a 12.2 points in PDI score(t =10.60,p<0.001).No differences were found between the groups in other aspects.As shown in our analysis,the winter group is significantly better than the summer group on early childhood development.The main conclusions of this paper are showed below:(1)the rate of anaemic is high among infants in poor rural areas of China;(2)there are also serious problems in the Early Childhood Development in our poor rural areas of China;(3)the season of birth has a signify impact on the early childhood development of infants in poor rural areas.