A new study led by a Boston College researcher found that experiencing educational opportunities in all stages of childhood and adolescence is the best predictor of higher educational attainment and earnings for disadvantaged American youth, as opposed to the impact of learning access during any single phase.
The findings, published in the June 30, 2026, issue of Educational Researcher, point to the critical value of educational opportunities for children from low-income households across their formative years, an alternative belief to the widely held viewpoint of the exceptional importance of exposure during early childhood.
"We found that experiencing educational opportunities in all phases — early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence— is the ideal scenario," said Eric Dearing, principal investigator and a professor in Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development's Counseling, Development & Educational Psychology department. "Experiencing just one educational opportunity in each stage increased a child's odds of graduating with a four-year degree by more than threefold."
The researchers utilized the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development — a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity — with an exclusive focus on 226 children born into low-income households. They examined this cohort's educational attainment and earnings at age 26 as a function of when they experienced educational opportunities, observing both the unique predicative power of opportunities accrued within the three developmental stages, and the additive predicative power of opportunities across stages.
For early childhood, opportunities included living in an enriching home environment, attending a high-quality childcare facility and/or pre-school, or residing in a socioeconomically advantaged neighborhood. For kindergarten through fifth grade, did they receive high quality elementary school instruction, and participate in organized afterschool activities in addition to an enhanced home and neighborhood? For adolescence, did they experience upward family economic mobility in addition to the other positive factors?
According to the researchers, educational opportunities in each development stage demonstrated positive and statistically significant associations with achieving education beyond high school.
"Opportunities in early childhood and adolescence predicted increases in the probability of going beyond high school to gain some college education or a two-year degree, and opportunities in both early and middle childhood predicted increases in the probability of completing a four-year degree or more education," noted Dearing and his co-investigators Henrik Daae Zachrisson, professor of educational sciences at the University of Oslo; and University of California, Irvine School of Education Associate Professor Andres S. Bustamante, and Chancellor's Professor of Education Emerita Deborah Lowe Vandell. "While less than 50 percent of low-income children who experienced none of these opportunities in any stage was likely to pursue education beyond high school, this percentage was greater than 60 percent for those with just one opportunity during at least one stage."
Furthermore, more than 80 percent of disadvantaged children who experienced at least one opportunity in each of the three stages were likely to pursue education beyond high school, with approximately one-third of these children earning a four-year college degree.
"These correlational findings are among the first to point to the importance of educational opportunities during each development stage for outcomes in adulthood," said Dearing, who also serves as the executive director of the Mary E. Walsh School for Thriving Children at Boston College. "We believe these results can help inform the public about what we, as a society, should expect from educational policies that target a single state of development versus strategies that provide more opportunities for disadvantaged children throughout their foundational years."
