ORA (Round 5) The Development of Inequalities in Child Educational Achievement: A Six Country Study

Inequalities in child development by parental socioeconomic status (SES) are a direct impediment to social mobility and life chances and hence are a concern across OECD countries. This project aims to advance understanding of SES disparities in child development by leveraging detailed cohort and administrative data from six rich countries - France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, the UK, and the US -- that are similar enough to form valid comparisons, but also sufficiently different to allow us to learn about the role of context in the development of inequalities. Because different aspects of development matter, and may be differentially affected by SES and by country contexts, we conceptualize child development broadly, to include cognitive development (language/literacy and maths skills, school achievement) and also social/emotional development (attention skills, behaviour problems) and health (overall health, obesity). The novel features of the project are to move beyond cross-sectional and single country snapshots and to embed examination of multiple developmental stages, multiple outcomes, and multiple countries in a highly harmonized framework. We aim to provide new evidence on the dynamics of inequalities in childhood and adolescence, what factors influence them, and how national contexts strengthen or buffer these processes.