Socioeconomic Status, Home Literacy Environment, and Early Literacy: A Comparative Study

• In Event: Leveraging Home Environments to Improve Early Learning Across the Developing World

Abstract

While both socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) have been found to be related to young children’s literacy development in a number of countries (Aram, Korat, Saiegh-Haddad, Arafat, Khoury, & Elhija, 2013; Farver, Yiyuan, Lonigan, & Eppe, 2013; Niklas & Schneider, 2013; van Steensel, 2006), researchers have yet to address whether these two factors are conceptually and empirically separate influences on child outcomes. Some argue that SES affects home literacy behaviors and the presence of reading materials in the home to such an extent that the two factors should be considered interchangeable. This study uses a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to examine the extent to which SES and HLE, respectively, are independently related to early literacy skills across countries, as well as to evaluate the comparative size of these effects. We also use a Bayesian invariance approach to determine whether these relationships are variant or invariant across countries (Muthèn & Asparouhov, 2013).
The data set includes samples from 14 low- and middle-income countries: El Salvador, Egypt, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Burundi, Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. All data sets were collected as baselines for Save the Children’s Literacy Boost projects. The total sample size is nearly 14,000 early primary-grade children. SES is measured through a series of country-specific household asset indicators, such as owning a television, motorbike, or mobile phone. HLE is measured by a series of child-reported behaviors and literacy-related assets in the home, such as whether an adult in the home reads to the child or helps with homework, and whether the household owns various types of text materials. We use letter knowledge, expressed as the percentage correct of the items presented, as our measure of early literacy skill. This simple measure is directly comparable cross-nationally, as it avoids issues such as the variation in word length across languages that can make comparisons of oral reading fluency measures unreliable.
Early results from these SEM analyses indicate that SES and HLE are correlated at a moderate level (r = .4), and that SES has a stronger impact on children’s early literacy skills than HLE. The findings of this study have implications for program planners, policymakers, and researchers working to improve early literacy in developing countries worldwide. Thus far, our findings suggest that in the long run, addressing poverty may be the most powerful means of improving children’s early literacy performance, but that encouraging supportive literacy practices in the home, which is a more concrete and actionable step, may also have a strong impact.

Authors

• Stephanie Simmons Zuilkowski, Florida State University

• Mark LaVenia, Florida State University

• Dana Charles McCoy, Harvard University