What's Early Childhood Investment? Some examples.

It is well known that children's socioeconomic background shapes their outcomes in school, both intellectually and behaviorally. However, most policies focus on improving schools, taking those disadvantages as given and simply acknowledging them as an excuse for inadequate performance. But another alternative is to actually improve these early background conditions. And, at least as I interpret them, most such policies could be called "Early Childhood Investment." For the sake of clarity, let's go over some examples of early social disadvantages and policies that are being (or could be) used to reduce them.* 

Background: Home Intellectual Environment
Literacy activities at home - like reading aloud, telling stories or doing art - predict better social skills, fewer teacher-reported behavioral problems  and higher literacy rate. Table 1 takes race (white vs black) as the splitting source for children's background. It is seen that white adults spend 36% more time reading to young children than black parents. Raikes et al (2006) show that toddlers of low-income mothers who read to them daily have better vocabulary and comprehension at 24 months. Table 1 also reports that white parents interact over 200% more with their children in activities that develop their critical thinking and creative skills (like puzzle solving, arts or simply talking). 

Table 1: Home intellectual environment (children age < 5).

Another standard proxy for intellectual environment is the number of books at home (though it is self-reported by parents, so it is not as objective as one would like). Table 2 shows that the better the socioeconomic status [SES] the higher the number of books. Similarly, white children live in households with 150% more books than black children. Behavioral skills of entering kindergartens in the top and bottom SES differ by 10-23 percentile points, and gaps do not disappear over time: over 30 ppt lower high-school completion rates and 15 ppt higher arrest rates are observed.

Table 2: Books at home, by race and socieconomic status.

By age 6, white children are reported to have spent over 1300 more hours engaged in conversation with adults than black children. Interaction with parents is one way children's choice-making and stances toward authority are developed. Upper-class parents typically give fewer orders, letting children develop their critical thinking and choice-making. On the other hand, lower-class parents expect more deference to authority. Similar differences are found for recreational activities between affluent and low-income families. Lower class children typically have more unstructured leisure time. Middle class children are more used to structured leisure, which is thought to help them operate later in controlled environments like classrooms.

Early Childhood Investment: Policies
Improving schools is certainly useful. However, coordinating school improvements with other community services that reduce these early disadvantages seems a very promising way to go. Here are some examples:

1. Nurse-Family Partnership [NFP]: nurses make regular home visits during pregnancy, helping coordinate physicians visits among others. After the baby is born, they keep visits for two more years, working with mothers to improve parenting practices (communicating with children and encouraging activities that develop emotional and cognitive skills). For example, results show that by age 15 children whose mothers participated in an NFP program had a 59 percent reduction in arrests. 
2. Head Start: This program aimed at children at age 3 includes child care and instruction for both children and parents, teaching child-rearing skills. Results show that children in Head Start spend more time reading, have better vocabulary and are more able to identify words and letters (Bracken and Fischel, 2008). Later on they show higher educational attainment, health and lower teen parenthood and criminal activity (Deming, 2009; Magnuson and Duncan, 2014).
3. High Quality Preschool: Perry School, Abecedrian Project and Chicago Child Parent Centers are examples aimed at children 3-4 years old and their parents, which are finding (preliminary) long-term benefits. Their idea is to focus on activities that develop social interaction, critical thinking and problem solving among others but further evaluation is probably needed.

A clear pattern of these policies is that they do not simply target children. They also aim at teaching parents to get better involved in the development of their children. Taking into account that children spend most of their time at home (rather than at school), this makes a lot of sense. Moreover, it is also noticeable how early these programs start. Some begin even before children are born, and there is some consensus that the earlier the start the better the results. 


Obviously no background influence is completely definitive. Some children with "bad backgrounds" may do better than some with "good" ones. We all know stories of some person who started from nothing and became a big success.  But socioeconomic background does influence opportunities (or distributions of outcomes) and, as a summary statistic, it is seen that average outcomes of children tend to go hand in hand with their backgrounds. Complementing improvements at schools with reduction in backgrounds' inequalities, through some of the policies mentioned above, may be the way to go.

* I focus here on home intellectual environment characteristics. Other issues like wealth, housing, neighborhood, malnutrition or health provision may be equally important. Moreover, all these characteristics interact (household with positive intellectual environment tend to have high wealth and live in good neighborhoods for example) making precise estimates on the impact of each background element not possible, so numbers in this post should be read with caution (although measures are taken to reduce these issues).

Based on a recent Economic Policy Institute article.