Inequality and Child Development

How can parenting provide better chances for poor and less advantaged children? Inequality starts at home.
Ariel Kalil from Chicago University shows how children face very different chances of getting ahead in life depending on the circumstances of their birth.
Parenting has a key role in diverging destinies of rich and poor children. In particular, the ways advantaged and disadvantaged parents interact with their children can have relevant effects on their future place in society. Ariel Kalil discusses how traditional policy interventions fail to attack the root cause of achievement gaps. To equalise the playing field, governments may need to invest in parents so parents can better invest in their children.
Unfortunately, large-scale interventions typically yield modest effect sizes at best and often do not even change children's skills in the long term. Understanding what motivates parents to invest in their children could have a major impact on the design of policies to reduce inequality in children's skill development.