Cueto, Santiago; Javier Escobal, Juan León y Mary Penny (2017). Does Visual Acuity Have an Effect on Children’s Educational Achievement? Working Paper Series, 172. Oxford: Young Lives.

Inequity is an important issue for many international initiatives, including the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One aspect of inequity that has received little attention is the impact of disability on education. This working paper explores whether mild or moderate levels of visual impairment are associated with educational performance for 7 and 8-year-old children in Peru. Descriptive statistics from the Young Lives sample suggested that children with poorer visual acuity have better performance in mathematics, reading and vocabulary tests. However, when several characteristics of the children and their families are included as controls, the results reverse, and we found a significant negative effect of poor visual acuity on mathematics tests, marginally significant for vocabulary, and not significant for reading.