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Many factors influence the health and well-being of children and the adults they will become. Yet there are significant gaps in how trajectories of healthy development are measured, how the potential for leading a healthy life is evaluated, and how that information can guide upstream policies and investments. The Gross Developmental Potential (GDP2) is proposed as a new capabilities-based framework for assessing threats to thriving and understanding progress in achieving lifelong health and wellbeing. Moving beyond the Gross Domestic Product’s (GDP) focus on economic productivity as a measure of progress, the GDP2 focuses on seven essential developmental capabilities for lifelong health and wellbeing. The GDP2 capability domains include Health -living a healthy life; Needs-satisfying basic human requirements; Communication-expressing and understanding thoughts and feelings; Learning-lifelong learning; Adaption -adapting to change; Connections -connecting with others; and Community -engaging in the community. The project team utilized literature reviews and meetings with the subject and technical experts to develop the framework. The framework was then vetted in focus groups of community leaders from three diverse settings. The community leaders' input refined the domains and their applications. This prototype GDP2 framework will next be used to develop specific measures and indices and guide the development of community-level GDP2 dashboards for local sense-making, learning, and application.

Currently, the Russian oil and gas industry is characterized by significant reserves depletion and the late stage of development of most fields. At the same time, new fields that are brought into industrial development, in the majority of cases, have hard-to-recover reserves. Furthermore, most prospective oil and gas deposits are located in the Arctic and its offshore territories and their development is much more complicated due to regional peculiarities. This substantiates the necessity of a special approach to the development of the oil and gas potential of the Arctic, based on innovation. The goal of the paper is to reveal the role of innovation activity in the sustainable development of the oil and gas potential in the Arctic and its offshore zone. The paper briefly presents the main urgent factors of Arctic development, which highlight the necessity of innovation for its sustainability. Then, it introduces the methods used for the research: the Innovation Policy Road mapping (IPRM) method in accordance with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) concept for clarifying how innovations will lead to sustainable development. In terms of results, this paper presents an innovation policy roadmap for the sustainable development of oil and gas resources of the Russian Arctic and its shelf zone and identifies the role of innovation within this development.

Background This comparative study provides cross-cultural insights into key protective factors for disadvantaged students’ academic resilience in Korea and South Africa. Grounded in the Ecological Systems Theory and the Developmental Assets Framework, the goal of this study is to learn lessons from the comparison of resilient vs. non-resilient students in both nations and inform evidence-based policies towards asset-based pathways to academic resilience. Methods Mixed research methods are used: (1) statistical analyses of TIMSS 2019 8th grade (Korea) and 9th grade (South Africa) math assessment/survey databases and (2) a case study of resilient vs. non-resilient students in South Africa. It examines both between-country and within-country inequalities of adversities (risk factors) and assets (protective factors). The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analyses of math achievement gaps reveal both endowment effects (i.e., differences in assets) and parameter effects (i.e., differences in the associations between assets and achievement). Results Findings show that South Africa lags behind Korea in math achievement not only due to higher adversities and lower assets but also due to more negative adversity effects (i.e., greater risk vulnerability) and less positive asset effects (i.e., lower returns on assets). Findings also show within-country differences between resilient and non-resilient student groups. In South Africa, resilient students perform better by having not only more assets but also better utilization of assets (i.e. stronger asset-achievement relations). In contrast, Korean resilient students have more assets, but they do not show stronger asset effects than their non-resilient counterparts. While both internal and external assets contribute to resilience, internal assets (e.g., learning motivation, confidence, and efforts) are the stronger differentiator between resilient and non-resilient groups in this sample. Conclusions Educational policy implications are discussed to measure and develop unrealized potential among disadvantaged students, specifically asset-driven pathways for academic resilience. This study calls for further research on culturally-responsive assessment of both risk and protective factors in large-scale international assessments.

The relative lack of attention to early childhood development in many developing countries remains a puzzle, and an opportunity. There is increasing evidence that investments in the nutritional, cognitive, and socio-emotional development of young children have high payoffs. Researchers and development practitioners are building on this evidence to raise the topic's profile and bring it to the attention of decision makers. This volume is an important contribution to these efforts. It thoroughly and carefully reviews the most recent empirical literature linking early childhood development outcomes, poverty, and shocks. In doing so, it brings an added perspective to the debate and makes the case that investments in the first years of life have the potential to be a critical component of poverty reduction strategies. The volume also goes beyond simply documenting the consequences of insufficient or inadequate focus on early childhood and identifies the range of policy options available to policy makers. The Human Development Perspectives series seeks to present thorough research findings on issues of critical strategic importance for developing countries. At its core is the perspective that investments in human capital are an essential aspect of efforts to promote global development and eradicate poverty. This volume makes it convincingly clear that investing in and protecting the human capital of young children is no small matter.

In Malaysia, Indonesian migrants are showing an increasingly clear preference for informal transfer mechanisms compared to their counterparts in other countries. A little less than half of all Indonesian migrants overseas—thought to be around 2 million—are working in Malaysia. An increasing number of migrants are women, and the corridor is also marked by a high number of undocumented migrants. Despite the increasing flows of migrants, only about 10 percent of the estimated flow of remittances into Indonesia from Malaysia is transferred through the formal system. The extent of the preference for the informal sector is unique in this corridor. Indonesian migrants in other countries are using the formal sector far more than the migrants in Malaysia. In addition, Indonesian women and undocumented migrants in Malaysia especially find formal sector transfers either hard to access or inappropriate for their needs. To this end, the study assists policymakers’ efforts to increase the impact of remittances on economic development and poverty reduction in Indonesia and to investigate options for attracting more migrants to use the formal financial sector. The report provides a descriptive overview of the Malaysia–Indonesia remittance corridor and suggests policy avenues for improving access to formal remittance transfer channels; increasing the transparency of the flows and the cost structure; and facilitating remittance transfers, particularly for undocumented and female migrant workers.

This chapter provides background on the different methods used, and populations studied, in developmental cognitive neuroscience. With the exception of one relatively new method, the techniques available for observing the functioning of the young human brain are those already commonly used in research on adults. High‐density event‐related potentials is a method of recording the electrical activity of the brain by means of sensitive electrodes that gently rest on the surface of the scalp. Part of the goal of developmental cognitive neuroscience is to relate changes in brain function and cognition to changes in the underlying brain structure. When considering the brain correlates of developmental disorders of genetic origin, there are at least four levels at which they can be described: gross brain anatomy, individual “deficit” areas, functional neural systems and pathways, and neurochemistry and microcircuitry.