Family Income and Parental Perceptions of Gifted Education: The Mediating Role of Parents’ Trust in Their Child’s Resilience

For decades, gifted education programs have identified students from upper-income families at notably higher rates than students from lower-income families. Most studies addressing socioeconomic inequalities in gifted education have focused on systemic and structural barriers to educational resources, such as poverty, peripheral areas, and language barriers. However, because most studies have relied exclusively on aggregate (school-level or national-level) data, the role of parental determinants in children’s assignment to gifted education programs has been overlooked. The current study examined whether and how family income is associated with parental perceptions of gifted education. We also examined parents’ trust in their child’s educational and psychological resilience as a possible mediating mechanism of this relationship. Participants were 251 parents of children in second through fourth grades who completed online questionnaires. Results showed that parents with a higher income were more likely to support the enrollment of gifted children into separate gifted programs than were parents with a lower income. The relationship between income and parental perceptions of gifted education programs was mediated by parents’ trust in their child’s educational and psychological resilience. Understanding the role of family income in shaping parental attitudes toward gifted programs may serve as a potential pathway to remove barriers and improve the access of students from different backgrounds to gifted education.