A Study On The Effect Of Comprehensive Intervention Of Home Visiting Service And Family Group Activities On The Early Development Of Children Aged 0-3 Years In Rural Areas

After more than 40 years of rapid growth since reform and opening up policy,the economic development of China has entered the phase of "new normal",and new requirements have been placed on the quality of human capital.Under the "new normal",various constraints on consumption,investment,comparative advantage of factors,and resource environment determine that China’s future economic growth will transform from being mainly driven by factors to more driven by technological progress and innovation.The key to achieving this transition is to improve the human capital quality of the future labor force in our country.The difficulty of improving the human capital quality of the future labor force lies in the improvement of the rural human capital quality.The formation and development of human capital is a long-term and continuous accumulative process.The human capital is also the key indicator to forecast acdamic performance,capability in career and income level of an individual.Therefore,it is of great significance to grasp the laws and characteristics of children’s brain development at different ages to promote the improvement of human capital quality.Medical and neuroscience research confirms that 0-3 years old is a critical period（or "window period"）for children’s development.Intervening children during this period to improve their cognitive,language,social,emotional and motor development will have a long-term and significant impact,and this impact will even continue into their adulthood.If early childhood development is lagging in the critical period,then this lag is almost impossible to be remedied after the age of three.Some previous international studies have confirmed that early intervention can effectively promote the early development of children.At present,the intervention about early childhood development in China can be mainly divided into two modes:home visit service and early childhood development center.Compared with other types of interventions which are in order to promote the early development of children,combining home visit services and family group activity interventions is able to provide individual guidance to each family during home visit services,and at the same time more opportunities can be offered to children and their main caregivers for peer support during family group activities.However,the current studies mostly focused either on the intervention only with home visit services or on the intervention only with family group activities,which leads to the shortage of research on intervention measures combining home visit service and family group activities.Furthermore,the existing studies are mostly limited to small sample areas,and there is a lack of systematic analysis of large sample surveys and intervention research programs aimed at this problem.This study is a randomized intervention experiment aimed to improve early childhood development of children aged 0-3.It was conducted in the year of 2019-2020,located in Southwest China.The type of intervention was a combination of home visit services and family group activities.Through a randomized controlled trial,this study collected panel data composed of 1,024 children aged 0-3 and their main caregivers,including data of child development level,children’s main caregivers’ mental health risks,children’s personal characteristics and family features and other information.This research aims to explore the direct mechanism of the impact of home visit services arid family group activity interventions on the early development of children based on the large sample data collected and through the research methods of econometrics and experimental economics,as well as to evaluate the main factors of children in the intervention process.The mental health risk of the caregiver is an indirect mechanism of the influence of the intermediary variable on the early development of children.It provides practical policy recommendations for improving the early development of children in rural areas of China and the quality of human capital in rural areas can be improved further.In order to achieve the above objectives,the content of this paper is as follows:（1）To understand the early development level of rural children and the current status and influencing factors of the mental health risks of the children’s main caregivers.To study the relationship between the early development level of children and the mental health risks of the main caregivers relationship.Specifically,children’s capabilities of cognition,language,social emotion and physical exercises are considered as core indicators for the level of development of children.Depression,anxiety and stress are three aspects that are considered as core indicators for the of the level of human mental health of the main caregivers.（2）Assess the direct mechanism of home visit services and family group activity intervention on the early development of children,and the heterogeneity analysis of the impact of intervention on it.（3）Assess the indirect mechanism of home visit services and family group activity intervention on the early development of children,whether there is a mediating effect on the mental health risk of the child’s main caregiver.The primary conclusions of this paper are as follows:（1）The problem of inadequate development of early childhood development in rural areas is more serious,and the mental health risk of rural children’s main caregivers is higher.Early childhood development level is related to the mental health risks of children’s main caregivers.（2）Whether it is an average treatment effect or a local average treatment effect,home visit service and family group activity intervention can significantly improve children’s cognitive,social-emotional,and motor development levels.In terms of the analysis of the heterogeneity of the intervention effect,the intervention has a greater impact on the motor development of children with siblings and those children whose main caregivers experienced junior high school education or above;children have a greater impact on language and social emotional development.（3）In the indirect mechanism of the influence of intervention on the level of early childhood development,there is an intermediary effect on the mental health risks of children’s main caregivers,that is,intervention will improve the level of early childhood development by alleviating the mental health risks of the main caregivers.Based on the above conclusions,the paper proposes the following policy recommendations:First,optimize the educational investment structure,and more educational resources can be provided on infants and toddlers in rural areas.Second,policies and measures for the early development of children aged 0-3 to determine early childhood can be fully implemented.Development plans can be made to provide directions and scientific methods for localities to carry out early childhood development services according to practical situation in different rural areas.Third,not only the direct effect of intervention methods on the level of early childhood development,but also the impact of intervention on the mental health of the child’s main caregiver,which will boost the level of early childhood development indirectly while policy makers plan to enlarge the scale of early childhood development intervention projects.