Equity at the Starting Line: Pre-Primary Education, Parenting, and Child Development in China

Abstract

Extensive international evidence from neuroscientific, social, and economic research demonstrates that early childhood development (ECD) provides a critical foundation for lifelong development. ECD also has extensive and long-lasting implications for equity during later stages of life. Robust evidence demonstrates that pre-primary education (PPE) and in-home nurturing (termed “parenting” for brevity) are vital in bolstering child development, suggesting that interventions to improve PPE participation and parenting practices for disadvantaged children can play a potentially critical equalizing role by levelling the playing field and promoting social equity. Increased recognition of such evidence is reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs’) explicit emphasis on ECD. Despite this, it is estimated that one in three children age 0-5 globally (or approximately 250 million children) are at great risk of not reaching their developmental potential, partly due to inadequate educational stimulation. At least six important research gaps undermine the evidence base for more extensive and effective policy and program targeting. Firstly, inadequate evidence on what drives disparities in access to key ECD interventions—namely PPE and parenting—poses a fundamental challenge to policymakers globally. Secondly, while an array of literature has examined the isolated role of either PPE participation or parenting on child development outcomes, research assessing their dual role remains very limited. Thirdly, research is particularly limited in developing countries, with existing studies largely focused on assessing how PPE participation or parenting influence children’s test scores, despite evidence from industrialized countries suggesting that broader dimensions of cognitive skills (for example intelligence and communication skills) and noncognitive skills (such as socioemotional and self-regulation skills) are more crucial for a wide range of long-term development outcomes. Fourthly, even in industrialized countries, longitudinal studies on ECD interventions are scarce: e.g., while research in both developed and developing countries finds a positive correlation between PPE participation and immediate or short-term child development outcomes, there is less understanding on such impacts’ persistence into later childhood. Fifthly, much of the existing research on PPE and especially parenting faces challenges in terms of external validity, as most studies focus on prematurely born or otherwise developmentally challenged children or rely on otherwise narrow samples. Finally, the existing literature on PPE largely focuses on estimating aggregate-level effects, with a dearth of research investigating potentially heterogeneous effects of PPE participation, which would be critical to provide deeper insights into the potential for ECD policy and program interventions to help level the playing field for disadvantaged children. The present research aims to help bridge these gaps by leveraging nationally representative China Family Panel Studies 2010-2020 to investigate in the Chinese context three sets of questions related to: (1) key factors driving inequitable exposure to PPE and positive parenting; (2) the dual roles of PPE and parenting on children’s long-term cognitive and noncognitive development; and (3) potential heterogeneity in the benefits of PPE participation across groups of children. This investigation deploys a set of robust analytical tools—including multivariate analysis, dominance analysis (also termed Shapley analysis), and an innovative method adapted from the medical literature—with a particular emphasis on examining disparities across children linked to five potential dimensions of inequality: gender, ethnicity, household wealth, mother’s educational attainment, and migration status. The research finds pronounced and persistent disparities in children’s exposure to PPE and positive parenting linked to four of the noted dimensions of inequality, excepting gender. It then demonstrates that these disparities in ECD exposure matter for longer-term child development outcomes: i.e., controlling for the noted dimensions of inequality and various factors, PPE participation and positive parenting at age 4-5 impact cognitive and noncognitive development at ages 10-11. Finally, more focused investigation into potentially heterogeneous effects of PPE participation on selected key cognitive and noncognitive development outcomes finds that PPE is most instrumental for children disadvantaged in terms of each of the five dimensions of inequality. The research offers deeper insights into determinants and consequences of critical disparities in children’s exposure to key ECD interventions in China. The findings hold important implications for ECD-related policies, programs, and practices in China and beyond, suggesting that targeted efforts to equitably promote PPE participation and positive parenting will be critical to break vicious cycles wherein disadvantaged children’s adverse exposure to PPE and positive parenting compounds the broader effects of their adverse situations in undermining their cognitive and noncognitive development. As additional important contributions to the literature, the research lays out a systematic approach to disentangle and assess the relative importance of multiple dimensions of inequality that could be extended to other country contexts and research fields, and it introduces into the education literature a novel approach to investigate heterogeneous effects.