Synopsis
In China, despite the introduction of economic reforms that have lifted millions out of poverty, the income gap between rural and urban areas remains wide. There is a growing realization in policy circles that economic growth alone cannot reduce absolute poverty and inequality, and that investment in human development is needed to sustain growth and improve social cohesion. Prepared as a collaborative study between the World Bank and China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, Early Child Development in China: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Improving Future Competitiveness analyzes the challenges facing the country in the care, development, and education for children from birth to six years of age, and details the long-term social benefits and high economic returns that targeted early child development interventions for disadvantaged children can provide. Investments in early child development are one of the most cost effective strategies for breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty and improving productivity and social cohesion in the long run. This report studies how programs to improve prenatal care, raise the health status and nutritional standards of young children, improve the knowledge of mothers and primary caregivers about health, child care, and nurturing techniques, and expand the availability of preprimary education services across China can strengthen a child’s prospects for success later in life. Ensuring that children can grow and live to their full potential is essential to enable the country to improve its future competitiveness and overcome the challenges it faces from an aging population and the transition from a middle- to a high-income economy.
Review
"This is an astonishing book, one I hardly hoped to see appear in our time. It reaffirms purposeful and morally coherent reality as the ground for the pursuit of beauty, and brilliantly brings into play the ideas of thinkers ranging from Eastern and Western Church Fathers to Lao Tzu, and including such fascinating moderns as Thomas Molnar and ?tienne Gilson, whose key voices are foolishly ignored by most of today's academics. " - - Jonathan Chaves, Professor of Chinese, The George Washington University "This book offers that which frustrated scholars of the humanities have been waiting: substance. Pontynen deftly connects the dots through western culture from what it is that a culture believes, to what it makes, to how it behaves. For the Love of Beauty offers a compelling defense of truth, goodness and beauty that quickens and inspires and makes one wince at the vapidity of much that passes today for scholarship." - Dr. Rod Miller Associate Professor and Chair, Art Department, Hendrix College "A remarkable change is occurring in western publishing. We were used to practical and pragmatic approach on the US-side and philosophical on the European. Now, that is changing: Americans write "imperial," not to say meta-historical works and Europeans are interested in concrete figures and party-politics. [In For the Love of Beauty] Professor Pontynen joins now the American agenda; he focuses with great erudition on the artistic side of world history. In well-structured chapters, he satisfies our interest in aspects of our past and present." - Thomas Molnar Professor, University of Budapest
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