Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisherThis paper examines how the relationship between parents’ educational
achievement (a marker of their socio‑economic status) and children’s early
developmental outcomes has evolved in Australia since the early 1980s.
The specific focus of this paper is whether the gradient in children’s early
developmental outcomes by parents’ education has changed since the
1980s. A comparative analysis of two surveys is undertaken that follows
Australian cohorts of children through their early years – the Australian
Temperament Project (following children born in Victoria in the early 1980s)
and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (following a representative
sample of children born in Australia in 1999). The analysis shows that the
relationship between parental education and children’s early developmental
outcomes does not in general appear to have changed greatly over the
years. The gradient associated with behaviour difficulties, persistence in
behaviour difficulties over time, and in reading skills has either remained the
same or strengthened somewhat, while the gradient associated with social
skills has weakened. The paper concludes with a discussion of issues that
might explain these trends
