Early childhood education and social inequalities

Lecture by Orazio Attanasio:”Parental beliefs and child development”

Orazio Attanasio is professor at the Yale University and a specialist in the economics of education, with a particular focus on early childhood.

The development of young children depends to a large extent on parental investment in education. In turn, this investment is conditioned by parents’ resources and preferences, as well as their understanding of the child’s development process. Using examples drawn from work carried out in several countries, particularly India, Orazio Attanasio will show how research makes it possible to propose innovative interventions, by measuring parents’ errors of perception and correcting them during group interactions with children and parents.

Roundtable:”Education and early childhood: between universalism and social targeting, how can we ensure that all children have access to quality education?”

With the participation of Carlo Barone (professor at Sciences Po), Pauline Domingo (director of the Childhood, Youth and Parenthood Department at the Caisse nationale des allocations familiales), Marc Gurgand (CNRS research director and professor at PSE), Mayalen Iron (director of the 1000 premiers jours de l’enfant project at the French Ministry of Solidarity and Health), Fabienne Rosenwald (director of the DEPP – Direction de l’évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance – at the French Ministry of Education) and Dominique Senequier (president of Ardian). The roundtable will be moderated by Gurvan Le Guellec, journalist at L’Obs.

There is a consensus on the principle that investing in children’s development from early childhood is one of the best ways of reducing the intergenerational transmission of social inequalities. But access to this investment must not itself be unequal. In France in 2018, 45% of families with children under the age of 3 used formal childcare, compared with just 19% of families living below the poverty line (Cnaf figures).

In view of this, one strong proposal is to develop a universal socialisation offer in a formal childcare setting, accessible to all children over the age of six months for four half-days a week (Summary of the ‘Premiers pas. Développements du jeune enfant et politique publique’, October 2021). What impact can such a measure be expected to have on children’s development and on reducing social inequalities? Doesn’t the emphasis on supply mask the lack of demand from disadvantaged families? Is there not a risk that the development of a universalist policy will be to the detriment of the more targeted actions needed to reach these families?