Browsing by Author "Abufhele, Alejandra"

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    A mediation analysis to disentangle relations between maternal education and early child development
    (2022) Telias, Amanda; Narea, Marigen; Abufhele, Alejandra
    Maternal education is associated with early child outcomes. However, the several mechanisms that may explain this relationship remain underexplored. Using data from 1,097 children aged 12-15 months in Chile, we estimate the maternal education gap across child cognitive and language outcomes. Following a bioecological perspective, we explore potential pathways by which maternal education might influence child development, such as child characteristics, the quantity and quality of mother-child interactions, and the availability of home stimulation. We found an average maternal education gap between children with mothers with the lowest and the highest educational levels of 0.36, 0.31, and 0.25 standard deviation in child cognition, expressive language, and receptive language, respectively. The mediational analysis showed that maternal stress and depression and the quality of the home environment mediated the relation between maternal education and child language and cognitive development.
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    Developmental Losses in Young Children from Pre-Primary Program Closures During the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (2022) Abufhele, Alejandra; Bravo, David; López-Bóo, Florencia; Soto Ramírez, Pamela Eliana
    The learning and developmental losses from pre-primary program closures due to COVID-19 may be unprecedented. These disruptions early in life can be long-lasting. Although there is evidence about the effects of school closures on older children, there is currently no evidence on such losses for children in their early years. This paper is among the first to quantify the actual impact of pandemic-related closures on child development, in this case for a sample of young children in Chile, where school and childcare closures lasted for about a year.We use a unique dataset collected face-to-face in December 2020, which includes child development indicators for general development, language development, social-emotional development, and executive function. We find adverse impacts on children in 2020 compared to children interviewed in 2017 in most development areas. In particular, nine months after the start of the pandemic, we find a loss in language development of 0.25 SDs
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    Developmental Losses in Young Children from Preprimary Program Closures during the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (2024) Abufhele, Alejandra; Bravo, David; Lopez-Boo, Florencia; Soto-Ramirez, Pamela
    The learning and developmental losses from preprimary program closures due to COVID-19 may be unprecedented. These disruptions early in life can be long-lasting. Although there is evidence about the effects of school closures on older children, there is scarce evidence on such losses for children in their early years. This article is among the first to quantify the actual impact of pandemic-related closures on early child development, in this case, for a sample of young children in Chile, where school and childcare closures lasted for about a year. We use a unique data set collected face-to-face in December 2020, which includes child development indicators for general development, language development, socioemotional development, and executive function. We find adverse impacts on children in 2020 compared to children interviewed in 2017 in most development areas. In particular, 9 months after the start of the pandemic, we find a loss in language development of 0.25 SD.
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    Higher education trajectories of migrants and the role of age of arrival: evidence from native and migrant students in Chile
    (2024) Abufhele, Alejandra; Herskovic, Luis; Alarcon, Samanta
    Higher education is a powerful tool for migrant integration into destination countries. This paper presents an empirical comparison between native and migrant students in Chile, focusing on their trajectory through different transitions: high school graduation, performance on university entrance exams, and decision to enroll in technical or university higher education. Results show that, when controlling for school performance, natives are more likely to complete every transition compared to migrant students, except in the enrollment to technical higher education where migrants have a higher rate. However, we also show that the timing of arrival to the educational system matters and that the differences between groups completely disappear if migrant students arrive before age 10 in the educational system. Therefore, we expand the educational literature by empirically showing that when migrants enter the school system is crucial. If they arrive early in life, they can have a trajectory similar to that of native students.
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    Marrying across Borders in Latin America: Visualizing Intermarriage Flows
    (2024) Robles, Adriana; Pesando, Luca Maria; Abufhele, Alejandra; Bucca, Mauricio; Urbina, Daniela R.
    The authors propose an adaptation of the well-known "circular plot," traditionally used to quantify international migration flows, to visualize patterns of intermarriage within Latin American countries. The authors present data on intermarriage flows between partners' countries of origin using data from recent household surveys from five Latin American countries. The visualization allows an easy-to-grasp snapshot of marital pairings considering partners born in different countries, as well as the identification of their spatial patterns. In some countries, such as Colombia and Peru, most intermarriage occurs between natives and Venezuelans. Conversely, in Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay, there is much wider heterogeneity in country-pair combinations. In Chile, no country-pair combination dominates, reflecting the more balanced nature of migration flows from a broader set of countries. Overall, the results aid the interpretation of trends and patterns in marriage across country lines by placing them within a comparative regional context. This is a flexible tool that could be easily adapted to multiple other countries within or outside of the region, to analyses over time, and to a heterogeneous array of couple-level characteristics.
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    Socioeconomic gradients in child development: Evidence from a Chilean longitudinal study 2010-2017
    (2022) Abufhele, Alejandra; Contreras, Dante; Puentes, Esteban; Telias, Amanda; Valdebenito, Natalia
    Empirical evidence shows that lack of resources during infancy and the process of accumulating disadvantages throughout childhood have important consequences for cognitive and socio-emotional development. This paper examines socioeconomic gradients across language and socio-emotional measures. Using longitudinal data from 7-year, three-wave panel data, we study the patterns of socioeconomic status and child development in Chile and estimate how much of the wealth gap can be explained by different mediators like maternal educational and skills, child attendance of preschool and school, possession of books, or domestic violence indicators. We show that there are strong associations between household wealth and child development, and that, as the child grows, the gap between the most extreme quintiles of the distribution, both in cognitive and socio-emotional skills, persists but decreases in magnitude. Taking advantage of the longitudinal nature of the data, we calculate a permanent skill for each child and each skill dimension in this 7-year period. The analysis for the permanent component shows that wealth gaps are important to determine language, but not socio-emotional skills, and that the gap is larger for girls than for boys in the early childhood period. While mediators account for some of the associations, there is still a large socioeconomic gap that persists in receptive language among children. The most important factors that mediate the wealth gaps are inherited from maternal characteristics. By understanding the dynamism of social and cognitive vulnerability experienced during childhood and employing longitudinal data and methods, this study contributes to and extends the existing literature on socioeconomic gaps and child development in the Latin American context.
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    The Covid-19 Pandemic and Maternal Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of Chilean and Foreign-Born Mothers
    (2022) Abufhele, Alejandra; Narea, Marigen; Telias, Amanda
    Objectives: We explore the effects of the pandemic on stress, depressive symptoms and parenting practices of mothers with children aged between 24- and 30-months, residents in Santiago, Chile, and the differences between foreign-born and native-born mothers.Methods: Using data from the longitudinal project Mil Primeros Dias and lagged-dependent models, we analyzed parental stress, depressive symptoms and parenting practices for native-born and foreign-born mothers. Lagged-dependent model allows us to take advantage of the longitudinal data by controlling for the previous score and baseline individual characteristics.Results: After 8 months of the pandemic, mothers of young children have more depressive symptoms, are more stressed, and show more hostility towards their children. Foreign-born mothers had 0.29 and 0.22 standard deviations (SD) more than native-born mothers in the parental distress and difficult child scales from the Parental Stress Index (PSI), respectively, and 0.17 SD more in the hostile-reactive parental behavior dimension.Conclusion: Findings suggest the need to implement policies and programs that prevent mental health deterioration for mothers, especially migrant mothers, to improve women's psychological condition and child wellness.
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    The Effect of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Maternal Mental Health and Parenting Practices Moderated by Urban Green Space
    (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2022) Narea, Marigen; Asahi, Kenzo; Abufhele, Alejandra; Telias, Amanda; Gildemeister, Damian; Alarcon, Samanta
    Stress generates difficulties in parenting, which affects child development. We aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on maternal mental health and parenting practices. We also explored to what extent green space is a protective factor in the aforementioned relationship. We explored heterogeneous lockdown effects using longitudinal georeferenced data for 985 families (mothers and 24- to 30-month-olds) and exploiting localized lockdowns in Chile. Controlling for observed and unobserved fixed characteristics, on average, we did not find an association between lockdown duration and maternal mental health or parenting practices. However, the previous nonsignificant association is heterogeneous across access to green space. Although lockdown duration increased dysfunctional interactions with children for mothers with little access to green space, we did not see the previous effect on mothers who live close to green space. Mothers who do not comply with the lockdown mandate are the ones who drive this heterogeneous effect.
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    The Normativity of Marriage and the Marriage Premium for Children's Outcomes1
    (2021) Torche, Florencia; Abufhele, Alejandra
    Children born to married parents have better health, behavioral, educational, and economic outcomes than children of unmarried mothers. This association, known as the "marriage premium," has been interpreted as emerging from the selectivity of parents who marry and from a positive effect of marriage. The authors suggest that the positive effect of marriage could be contextual, emerging from the normativity of marriage in society. They test this hypothesis using the case of Chile, where marital fertility dropped sharply from 66% of all births in 1990 to 27% in 2016. The authors find that the benefit of marriage for infant health was large in the early 1990s but declined as marital fertility became less normative in society, to fully disappear in 2016. Multivariate analysis of temporal variation, multilevel models of variation across place, sibling fixed effects models, and a falsification test consistently indicate that marriage has a beneficial effect when marital fertility is normative and a weak effect when is not. Generalizing from this case, the authors discuss contextual effects of diverse practices and statuses.
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    Understanding vulnerable and multiple life courses across Latin America
    (2024) Biehl Lundberg, Andrés; Cabib Madero, Ignacio; Undurraga Fourcade, Eduardo Andrés; Abufhele, Alejandra
    In this debate article, we examine how the growth and consolidation of life course research –a field experiencing a “golden age” according to Ferraro and Shafer (2017)– has enriched our understanding of social vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean (LA&C) 1. Our examination of life course and vulnerability studies aims to provide insights on two critical aspects of this region: First, we explore the impact of welfare institutions on diverse life trajectories, and second, we address the deeply entrenched inequalities of LA&C societies. Accordingly, our conceptual discussion of vulnerability and the life course revolves around these twin themes, the role of welfare institutions and the persistent inequality of LA&C societies, which hold significant implications for the sociologyand social policy of the region.