Giving Compass' Take:

• Research shows that investing in early childhood programs will increase social mobility because children are more likely to stay in school longer. 

• In addition to supporting early ed programs, donors might consider putting dollars behind home visiting initiatives as well.

• Read the Giving Compass Literacy Guide for donors. 

Childhood poverty remains a persistent and daunting problem in the United States. A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranked the U.S. 35th out of 40 member nations in addressing childhood poverty.

One in every five children in the U.S. is living below the poverty line and poverty is the single best predictor of life trajectories.

Recent research by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia showed that as early as 5 weeks of age, children born into poverty had less grey matter brain volume (i.e., the part of the brain where information is processed) than their middle-income counterparts. In addition, living in poverty exerts its impact throughout life in poorer health outcomes like chronic illness and heart disease decades later.

Social mobility in the U.S. is among the lowest in wealthy industrialized countries.

Thankfully, we have evidence that we can begin to reverse this by investing in early childhood programs. Universal high-quality preschool, for example, shows that children who attend good early education programs are more likely to stay in school and to have strong educational outcomes. Home visiting confers similar benefits with high-quality programs reducing child abuse and neglect, decreasing pre-term births and low-birth weight, as well as increasing school readiness and high school graduation rates.

Read the full article on childhood poverty by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Andres S. Bustamante, and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff at Brookings