ABSTRACT
There is no one picture of child career development in developing world contexts. Neither can we overlay the picture of child career development obtained from developed world contexts on children in the developing world. I make these assertions using two principal differences in the experiences of children in developing versus developed world contexts. First, developing economies are characterised by considerably higher degrees of heterogeneity and inequities than are developed economies such that experiences relevant to career development in childhood can range from (extremely) suboptimal to (extremely) optimal. Second, as a developing country is “one in which the majority lives on far less money – with far fewer basic public services – than the population in highly industrialized countries” (World Bank, 2012), the proportion of children whose experiences are suboptimal is far greater in developing than in developed economies.
