About one in 20 infants worldwide is subjected to physical abuse by a caregiver in their first two years of life, according to the first review to bring together anonymous reports from caregivers about behaviours like spanking, slapping, shaking and hitting. Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Memorial University of Newfoundland reviewed 20 studies that together encompassed reports on more than 220,000 infants and caregivers across several countries. When caregivers were asked privately and anonymously, 4.8 per cent reported at least one act of physical aggression toward an infant under 24 months. Anonymous surveys let caregivers disclose behaviour that never reaches a clinic, police service or social worker. Such behaviours can have lasting effects on a child’s learning, behaviour and mental health. Evidence has linked these actions with harm and with a higher chance of more severe violence in the future. Understanding how common these kinds of behaviours are could help health systems, policymakers and families focus on prevention, getting support to parents before a bad moment turns into injury.

Why are adolescents so sensitive to their peers’ behaviour? And is this sensitivity necessarily negative, as the term peer pressure often implies? In his PhD dissertation, UvA behavioural scientist Andrea Gradassi demonstrates that adolescents are particularly influenced by classmates to whom they are socially close, such as friends, as well as by peers who occupy high-status positions within the classroom social network.

A comprehensive new systematic review published in The Journal of Nutrition provides the latest evidence that large-scale food fortification is a highly cost-effective intervention for reducing global malnutrition.

Teens who frequently lash out at others may face lasting physical health consequences later in life, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The study found that aggressive behavior in early adolescence is linked to faster biological aging and higher body mass index (BMI) by age 30.

Following the implementation of the NAFTA free trade agreement, more people lost their lives in violence along key drug trafficking routes to the USA than in previous years / publication in the ‘Journal of Development Economics’

A new study finds that the greater the amount of populist rhetoric in a nation, the less likely entrepreneurs are to register their businesses – dodging both taxes and government regulations.