"What Works": Research You Can Use

Volume 30, Number 4, April 2003

Closing the Disparity Gap

Research Finding:

Middle- and high-income neighborhoods provide better access to reading materials.

Comment

Access to reading materials is a major criterion in predicting motivation to read and reading achievement.

Children in higher-income neighborhoods are likely to be deluged with a wide variety of reading materials. However, children from poor neighborhoods have to aggressively and persistently seek them out.

There are more places to buy books in high-income neighborhoods, including bookstores, drugstores, grocery stores, bargain stores, corner stores and children's stores, as many as 13 outlets compared to four in low-income neighborhoods. Most low-income neighborhoods have no place to buy young adult books.

High-income children have access to a much wider variety of books. The total number of children's book titles available in two low-income neighborhoods studied was 358 (one title for every 20 children) in one and 55 in the other (one title for every 300 children) compared to 1,597 titles (0.3 per child) in one high-income neighborhood and 16,455 (13 per child) in the other. Comparing the print richest and the print poorest, high-income children have 4,000 times the number of titles available. Further, preschool book collections in high-income neighborhoods were of better quality.

In high-income neighborhoods, school libraries had more books per child (18.9 and 25.7, compared to 12.9 and 10), were open more days (5 and 5, vs. 4 and 2) and had a trained librarian with an MS or MLS; neither low-income school library had a trained librarian.

High-income public libraries had more juvenile books per child (3.9 and 12.7, compared to 2.5 and 2.2). Both were open two evenings per week (until 8 p.m.); the-low income libraries were never open past 6 p.m.

In the high-income neighborhood, there are more places suitable for reading (e.g., coffee shops with good lighting, seating, friendly staff); thus, children in the high-income communities are more likely to see people reading.

Sources

Duke, N. (2000). For the rich it's richer: Print experiences and environments offered to children in very low- and very high-socioeconomic status first-grade classrooms. American Educational Research Journal 37 (2), 441-478.