Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital (S Goldfeld, S Guo, E O'Connor, S Gray, S Chong, A Kvalsvig, and M O'Connor), Melbourne, Australia; Department of Pediatrics, University of Melbourne (S Goldfeld, M Moreno-Betancur, S Guo, F Mensah, K Williams, and M O'Connor), Melbourne, Australia.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Melbourne (S Goldfeld, M Moreno-Betancur, S Guo, F Mensah, K Williams, and M O'Connor), Melbourne, Australia; Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital (M Moreno-Betancur and F Mensah), Melbourne, Australia.
Acad Pediatr. 2021 Aug;21(6):1046-1054. doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2021.04.019. Epub 2021 Apr 29.
Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds have poorer learning outcomes. These inequities are a significant public health issue, tracking forward to adverse health outcomes in adulthood. We examined the potential to reduce socioeconomic gaps in children's reading skills through increasing home reading and preschool attendance among disadvantaged children.
We drew on data from the nationally representative birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 5107) to examine the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage (0-1 year) on children's reading skills (8-9 years). An interventional effects approach was applied to estimate the extent to which improving the levels of home reading (2-5 years) and preschool attendance (4-5 years) of socioeconomically disadvantaged children to be commensurate with their advantaged peers, could potentially reduce socioeconomic gaps in children's reading skills.
Socioeconomically disadvantaged children had a higher risk of poor reading outcomes compared to more advantaged peers: absolute risk difference = 20.1% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 16.0%-24.2%). Results suggest that improving disadvantaged children's home reading and preschool attendance to the level of their advantaged peers could eliminate 6.5% and 2.1% of socioeconomic gaps in reading skills, respectively. However, large socioeconomic gaps would remain, with disadvantaged children maintaining an 18.3% (95% CI: 14.0%-22.7%) higher risk of poor reading outcomes in absolute terms.
There are clear socioeconomic disparities in children's reading skills by late childhood. Findings suggest that interventions that improve home reading and preschool attendance may contribute to reducing these inequities, but alone are unlikely to be sufficient to close the equity gap.
社会经济地位较低的儿童学习成绩较差。这些不平等现象是一个严重的公共卫生问题，会对成年后的健康结果产生不利影响。我们研究了通过增加处境不利儿童的家庭阅读量和学前教育入学率，缩小儿童阅读技能方面社会经济差距的可能性。
我们利用澳大利亚儿童纵向研究（Longitudinal Study of Australian Children）全国代表性出生队列的数据，考察了社会经济劣势（0-1 岁）对儿童阅读技能（8-9 岁）的影响。采用干预效果法来估计，处境不利儿童提高家庭阅读量（2-5 岁）和学前教育入学率（4-5 岁）的程度与他们的优势同龄人相当，这可能会降低儿童阅读技能方面的社会经济差距。
与社会经济地位较高的同龄人相比，处境不利的儿童阅读成绩较差的风险更高：绝对风险差异为 20.1%（95%置信区间[CI]：16.0%-24.2%）。结果表明，将处境不利儿童的家庭阅读和学前教育入学率提高到其优势同龄人水平，分别可以消除阅读技能方面 6.5%和 2.1%的社会经济差距。然而，社会经济差距仍将很大，处境不利的儿童阅读成绩较差的绝对风险仍将高出 18.3%（95%CI：14.0%-22.7%）。
儿童在晚童年时期的阅读技能方面存在明显的社会经济差异。研究结果表明，提高家庭阅读和学前教育入学率的干预措施可能有助于缩小这些不平等，但仅凭这些措施不太可能足以消除公平差距。
