Starting Well: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Academic Skills in Early Childhood

This study presents a meta-analysis of the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and academic skills in early childhood using both cross-sectional and longitudinal effect sizes. The cross-sectional (111 studies with 435 effect sizes representing 86,808 participants) and longitudinal (59 studies with 321 effect sizes representing 46,870 participants) analyses show midlevel effect sizes (r cross = 0.25, r long = 0.31). The moderation analyses reveal that (a) higher GDP per capita strengthens the SES–academic skill relation in a cross-sectional analysis; (b) early education expansion might reduce the effect of SES on academic skill over time; (c) income inequality does not moderate the relation between SES and academic skill; and (d) the pooled longitudinal relation (i.e., within one year) between SES and academic skill is larger than the pooled cross-sectional relation. Taken together, these findings can guide future work on the relationship between SES and academic skill in early childhood.