ABSTRACT

In recent decades, there has been much important international attention to promoting the healthy development of young children and investing resources in human capital development programs focused on early childhood education and nutrition, especially among those families experiencing intergenerational poverty (Daelmans et al., 2015). While the gains of these global efforts have yielded increased survival of children into adolescence, critical questions about what happens to developmental trajectories during adolescence have yet to be addressed. Adolescents are now about 20% of the global population, with the highest concentration of adolescents in the poorest regions such as sub-Saharan Africa (UNICEF, 2012). We are now seeing a demographic “youth bulge” in many low-income countries, with a higher proportion of their population comprising adolescents. Globally, we see major health and educational disparities within and across countries, disproportionately affecting adolescent girls and low-income adolescents who have already entered the labor market (UNICEF, 2012).