Reduce or Reproduce: The Impact of Government Engagement on Preschool Education Inequality

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Issues in Education Policy: Finance Reform, Segregation, and Affordable Housing (Table 4)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the impact that government involvement has had on the current state of inequality in preschool education. As a starting point in life, preschool education has the highest returns (Heckman and Masterov, 2007). Governments in several countries are providing greater access to quality preschool education for their citizens, especially the poor (Biden, 2021, Wen, 2010). While this is seen as critical and fundamental to national development and social welfare, government involvement faces a critical debate on whether to reduce or reproduce inequalities in preschool education. Most critical is how government input affects household investment in education, which has the most important impact on children's education (Coleman et al., 1966). The government's obsessive expansion of pre-primary education may have reduced the quality of public education, causing higher-income families to increase their investment in education in order to switch to public schools, leaving lower-income families to spend less on education. In such a context, the increase in positive investment actually exacerbates inequality in pre-primary education, contrary to the original policy intent. This article provides an empirical analysis in this regard

Author

• Zhuorui Deng, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author