Abstract

How much of the income-based gaps in cognitive ability and academic achievement could be closed by a two-year, center-based early childhood education intervention? Data from the Infant Health and Development Program, which randomly assigned treatment to low-birth-weight children from both higher-and low-income families between ages one and three, shows much larger impacts among low-than higher-income children. Projecting IHDP impacts to the U.S. population's IQ and achievement trajectories suggests that such a program offered to low-income children would essentially eliminate the income-based gap at age three and between a third and three-quarters of the age five and age eight gaps. © 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.