language in the Denver test place 82 percent of children in the lowest quartile, and 61 percent in the lowest decile. A very large fraction of children in our sample is also delayed in short-term memory—85 percent place in the lowest quartile, and 61 percent in the lowest decile of the distribution used to standardize the test.

These delays in language and memory are very severe. For instance, the numbers for the TVIP imply that 85 percent of the children in our sample are at least 21 months delayed in receptive vocabulary. However, the implied delays are reasonably consistent with those observed among other populations with high poverty levels and low education in Latin America.<sup>12</sup> Turning to other domains of child development, Table 2 shows that outcomes are somewhat better on the social-personal scale of the Denver—46 percent of children in the sample place in the lowest decile— and for fine motor skills—40 percent place in the lowest decile for this outcome. Children in our sample perform even better in terms of gross motor skills: a much smaller fraction of children, 29 percent, place in the lowest decile of the distribution of the Denver, and 24 percent place in the lowest decile of the McCarthy leg motor scale.

In addition to documenting the large fractions of children in our sample that are delayed, Table 2 shows that there appear to be no obvious differences in delays between boys and girls, but delays increase with child age for some outcomes. In the case of language, the fraction of children who place in the lowest decile of the distribution of the language measure of the Denver increases from 48 percent for children ages 0-35 months, to 59 percent for children aged 36-59 months, and to 79 percent for children aged 60-83 months; comparable numbers for the TVIP, which can only be applied to children ages 36 months and older, are 70 percent for children aged 36-59 months, and 97 percent for children aged 60-83 months. Similar patterns can be observed for the social-personal test in the Denver, and for the McCarthy memory test, but not for the measures of fine and gross motor skills. In sum, there are striking age patterns in some outcomes,

> 12 In the sample of children in Ecuador analyzed by Paxson and Schady (2007, 2008) the average child places in the 11th percentile of the distribution of the TVIP.  In the case of performance on memory, the tests used are not strictly comparable, but the average child in the Ecuador sample places in the 29<sup>th</sup> percentile of a test of short-term memory, and in the 13<sup>th</sup> percentile of a test of long-term memory from the Woodcock-Johnson battery of tests.  However, the sample of children from Ecuador in Paxson and Schady is considerably better off than our sample of children from Nicaragua.  34 percent of households in the Ecuador study have consumption levels that are below one US dollar per capita per day, compared to 82 percent of households in our study.  There are also marked differences in parental education, which is very robustly associated with performance on the TVIP—the average education of mothers in the Ecuador sample is 6.7, compared to 4.1 for the sample used in our paper.

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