What does research say about socioeconomic status and children’s access to higher quality early education programs?

In communities where free universal preschool is not available, parents must generally pay for early education programs. In "Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School", Lee and Burkam (2002) report analyses of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort showing that as parents' incomes increase, their children are more likely to have attended child care or preschool programs.

Some children from low-income families have increased access to preschool programs, due to the availability of publicly-funded early education programs for children in poverty. For example, the federally-funded Head Start program provides free access to children in poverty at ages 3 and 4. However, Head Start does not have sufficient funding to serve all eligible children.

State efforts also provide some children from low-income families with a high-quality preschool education. In New Jersey, nearly 40,000 children in the state's highest-poverty (Abbott) districts attend state-funded preschool programs in 2002-03. For further information about New Jersey's preschool education program and recommendations for the future, see "Fragile Lives, Shattered Dreams" (Barnett, Tarr, Lamy, & Frede, 2001) and the New Jersey Department of Education's "Snapshot of the Abbott Preschool Program".

In some cases, middle-class families may have the most limited access to affordable, high-quality preschool options. These families' incomes are too low to allow their children to attend expensive private preschools, but too high to meet income qualification standards set by free, publicly-financed programs.

NIEER Director W. Steven Barnett reviews research on the benefits of early education programs in a 2002 chapter entitled "Early Childhood Education". Many long-term studies have been designed to focus on children from low-income families--including studies of model preschool programs as well as those of larger-scale preschool programs in public schools. These evaluations of intervention programs for at-risk children have investigated the various long-term benefits associated with participation in early education.

For information about other important predictors of children's participation in early care and education programs, such as maternal education and employment status, click here.