IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucl/cepeow/25-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding Early Inequalities: Multiple Dimensions of Children's Developmental Contexts Predict Age 3 Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Laura Outhwaite

    (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities)

Abstract

Inequalities in children's cognitive and socioemotional skills emerge early and persist throughout childhood. This study examines how multiple dimensions of children's developmental contexts, including demographic, socioeconomic and family circumstances, predict age 3 outcomes using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2012-2022). In a cross-sectional sample of 5,700 3-year-olds and their families, results showed that child health, the home learning environment, turning 3 during Covid-19, child ethnicity, parent education, and financial strain in the home significantly predicted early outcomes in communication, daily living, socialisation, and motor skills. Although income-related eligibility for early years pupil premium did not predict early outcomes, this may reflect the inadequacies of this indicator for capturing all families facing financial difficulties. There was also an increasing gap in early outcomes as children experienced more indicators related to disadvantage, relative to children with no indicators. Overall, this study highlights the importance of a multidimensional approach for understanding and reducing early educational inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Laura Outhwaite, 2025. "Understanding Early Inequalities: Multiple Dimensions of Children's Developmental Contexts Predict Age 3 Outcomes," CEPEO Working Paper Series 25-05, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, revised May 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:25-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp25-05.pdf
    File Function: Original version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    socioeconomic circumstances; early years; child development; inequalities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucl:cepeow:25-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jake Anders (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.