Children as economic and social factors in the development process

This report aims to explore present thinking and experience on childhood and children, and to identify the most constructive future directions for policy. The report is based on concepts and theories from social anthropology, developmental psychology, sociology, demographics, economics and history and attempts to bridge the gap between these fields and policy making. The report maintains that childhood is best understood as a culturally and situationally diverse social construction. The variations in the way that children are perceived and treated reflect cultural differences in priorities in child development and beliefs pertaining to childhood and account for major differences in both children's social and economic roles and child development outcomes. This report focuses on children all over the world and on children of all ages. Although there are also references to children under the age of 8 throughout the report, section 3 (p.23) on the diversity of childhood focuses most on the early childhood years