The research, which was based on 12,500 British five-year-olds in 2006 and 2007 in the Millenium Cohort Study, found the gap between poor and middle-income children to be much wider than between middle- and higher-income children. Children from the richest families were 5.2 months ahead of middle-income children in vocabulary tests by the age of five.
The researchers concluded that good parenting and a supportive home environment were the most important factors leading to better test scores at age five, accounting for half the explained gap between lowand middle-income children. Just under half of children from the poorest families were read to daily at the age of three, compared with eight in ten from the richest families.
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