Morning Briefing

Gordon Alexander, director of the office of research at UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, writes in this post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog" that a series published in Friday's Lancet on early child development (ECD) shows "that the payoff from concerted, integrated action around ECD would be enormous." Additional focus on and investment in ECD, particularly in the areas of nutrition, maternal and family health, and poverty alleviation, would help children reach their full potential in adulthood, which means "investing in ECD now will quite literally yield billions of dollars in later years," he says.