These opportunity gaps were, in turn, strongly linked with levels of educational attainment, including whether children graduated from college or not, as well as their annual earnings in early adulthood. This evidence strongly suggests that a key to understanding the long-term consequences of low family income is the accumulation of opportunities across childhood and adolescence in learning contexts both inside and outside of school.

In efforts to explain why family income is so strongly correlated with a child’s chances of academic success, education researchers have theorized that “opportunity gaps” — systemic, pervasive and compounding disparities in access to resources that support learning inside and outside of school across childhood and adolescence — are to blame. Until now, however, the research evidence for this perspective has been largely based on snapshots of children’s lives in one setting (e.g., at home or in the classroom or in their neighborhoods) during a single stage of childhood (e.g., during early childhood or middle childhood or adolescence).

To help move beyond snapshots of children’s lives, we used a longitudinal study of 814 children from lower-, middle- and higher-income families who were followed from birth through age 26 with frequent, gold-standard measurements of their surroundings and experiences from early childhood through adolescence. Children’s exposure to educational opportunities were repeatedly documented in five key settings (home, early care and education, school, after school and neighborhood), as were opportunities of upward family economic mobility during this time. At age 26, their educational attainment was assessed — did they graduate from high school, attend some college, earn a degree — and they reported their annual earnings.

Based on a 12-point index of children’s access to opportunities, we found that the majority of children born into low-income households experienced one or none of these opportunities at any point between birth and the end of high school. On the other hand, nearly all children born into higher-income households repeatedly gained access to opportunities such as high-quality child care, excellent classroom instruction and supportive emotional climates in elementary school and had multiple chances to be involved in structured after-school programs, to name a few.

By the end of high school, more than 90 percent of higher-income children had experienced four or more opportunities, but fewer than 20 percent of lower-income children had. In turn, this disparity in access to life opportunities was a powerful predictor of educational attainment and earnings at age 26, with these gaps in opportunity largely explaining why children who grew up in low-income households had lower educational attainment and earnings. However, underscoring the importance of improving opportunity for disadvantaged children, each additional opportunity was most strongly and positively associated with education and earnings in adulthood for those children born into low-income households. For example, for children from low-income backgrounds, an increase from zero to four opportunities was associated with increasing the likelihood of graduating from a four-year college from about 10 percent to about 50 percent.

The family economic backgrounds into which children are born are robustly linked with their chances of long-term educational and financial success. Opportunity gaps may be the key driver of this. Indeed, in this 26-year longitudinal study, we find very large gaps in educational opportunities in the United States for children from lower- versus higher-income households. While correlational, the study also points to the potential for serious consequences of differences in cumulative opportunities for educational attainment and earnings in adulthood. Given the size and breadth of the disparity in educational opportunity, it is clear that we need policy and intervention approaches that provide opportunities for disadvantaged children and adolescents across settings, inside and outside of school.

One promising approach are community school partnership programs or integrated student support interventions. With evidence of decreased high school dropout rates and increased college completion, these interventions use schools as hubs for connecting low-income children and their families with a range of opportunities through partnerships with community-based agencies, from after-school programming to housing assistance and health care and many other forms of enrichment and support. This approach is also seen in the comprehensive family support provided through Early Head Start and Head Start preschool programs. Linking these types of approaches from early childhood through adolescence could lead to meaningful reductions in educational opportunities and, in turn, increase children’s chances to succeed and thrive.