ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Figure 4-10
High-Income Parents Spend More Time
on Educational Activities with their Children, 2014
Hours per Week
2.0
Mothers
Fathers
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
High-Income Low-Income High-Income Low-Income
Note: High-income refers to top quartile while low-income refers to bottom quartile. Includes time
spent helping with homework, attending school meetings, reading to or with children, and other
activities assosicated with children's education.
Source: American Time Use Survey (2014).
time use by parents’ educational attainment: highly educated mothers tend
to engage in more complex talk with their children and spend more time
reading and, at 3 years old, their children have more expansive vocabularies
than children with less exposure to books and language (Vernon-Feagans et
al. 2015).
These disparities in early childhood development can be exacerbated
by later gaps in formal early schooling opportunities, as demonstrated by an
extensive literature on the positive impacts of preschool on cognitive and
non-cognitive outcomes. Children’s enrollment in formal learning environments
is especially affected by socioeconomic status. About 60 percent
of 3- and 4-year olds whose mothers have a college degree are enrolled in
preschool, compared to about 40 percent of children whose mothers did
not complete high school (Figure 4-11). Although preschool attendance has
increased for all maternal education groups since the 1970s, children of lesseducated
mothers are still less likely to attend preschool, in part due to the
significant cost burden of high-quality early childhood care. Lower-income
families are less likely to be able to afford care: among families with childcare
expenses and working mothers, families below the Federal Poverty
Level pay an average of 30 percent of their income in child-care costs, compared
with 8 percent among non-poor families (Laughlin 2013).
Since formal early childhood education is less affordable for children
who grow up in disadvantaged settings, inequalities in achievement
Inequality in Early Childhood and Effective Public Policy Interventions | 167