Do child care characteristics during toddlerhood explain income-based gaps in reading and math skills at preschool?

Caitlin McPherran Lombardi, Eleanor Fisk and Kyle DeMeo Cook

Children and Youth Services Review, 2021, vol. 131, issue C

Abstract: Children’s early care and education (ECE) experiences have been found to explain developmental differences in school readiness between children in low- versus high-income households. However, the majority of this research has focused on preschool and center-based ECE. We have less knowledge about the specific characteristics of ECE across setting types prior to preschool that contribute to later income-based gaps in children’s cognitive skills. This study examined children’s ECE characteristics in formal and informal settings during toddlerhood (age 2) as mediators of the association between family income and children’s reading and math skills at preschool (age 4). Findings from a nationally representative sample of children who attended ECE at age 2 (N = 4,500) revealed that, among 8 characteristics of children’s ECE experiences at age 2, only one characteristic, caregivers’ report of daily reading, was a significant predictor of children’s later reading and math skills. Caregivers reporting that they read to the child daily was predictive of higher reading (0.16 SD) and math (0.12 SD) skills at age 4. Children’s ECE experiences, driven by daily reading at age 2, accounted for 7% of the gap in reading skills between children from low- and high-income families at age 4. Findings from this study highlight income-based disparities in daily reading across ECE settings among toddlers, and suggest ECE caregiver daily reading as one potentially policy-malleable mechanism in reducing income-based achievement gaps.

Keywords: Child care; Family income; Toddler; Cognitive development; Math skills; Reading skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740921003613
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:131:y:2021:i:c:s0190740921003613

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106285

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().