ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Figure 4-6
Likelihood of Scoring Very Low
on Measures of Cognition at Age 5, 2006
Percent Scoring Very Low
40
Below 100% of Federal Poverty Level
35 Above 185% of Federal Poverty Level
30
30
26
25
20
15
10
7 7
5
0
Math Skills
Reading Skills
Note: Very low is defined as more than one standard deviation below average on academic measures.
Data are from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort. Test scores were measured in
fall of 2006 or 2007.
Source: Isaacs (2012).
of math skills and over 4 times more likely to score “very low”’ on reading
skills than children in more well-off households (Figure 4-6).
These gaps tend to follow children throughout their school careers,
putting impoverished children at a substantial academic disadvantage that
can be hard to overcome. As shown in Figure 4-7, most of the income
achievement gap emerges before age 5, and it remains relatively constant
through the beginning of high school—suggesting that achievement gaps in
later years are established in the earliest years of childhood. Some researchers
argue that these gaps have grown over the past 50 years as overall income
inequality has grown, and as the relationship between income and achievement
has become stronger (Reardon 2011).7 Family income is an increasingly
important determinant of children’s future earnings, suggesting that
parental income inequality can have a long-run impact on educational and
labor market inequality as their children age (Duncan, Kalil, and Ziol-Guest
2015).
Children experiencing poverty are also more likely to exhibit behavioral
problems and to perform worse on non-cognitive skills tests. As shown
in Figure 4-8, at age 5, children in poor households are nearly 80 percent
7 There is some disagreement on the comparability of achievement gaps across studies over
time. While some studies suggest gaps in test scores across socioeconomic groups stabilize
from primary school (Reardon 2011; Heckman 2006), others argue that differences in academic
achievement based on standardized test scores are not comparable over time (Nielsen 2015).
Inequality in Early Childhood and Effective Public Policy Interventions | 163