Stratification in parents’ selection of developmentally appropriate books for children: register-based evidence from Danish public libraries

ABSTRACT

This paper studies socioeconomic gradients in parents' selection of developmentally appropriate children's books from public libraries. I draw on developmental gradients research to hypothesize that families with high socioeconomic status (SES) select a higher share of books that match children's developmental stage in order to best improve children's learning environments. Based on Danish registry data on all books borrowed from public libraries in 2020, I find that highly educated families are more likely to use libraries and borrow more books, but they do not select a larger share of developmentally appropriate books; in fact, they select a slightly lower share. In contrast, high-income families borrow both a little more books and a little higher share of developmentally appropriate books, than low-income families. The supplementary analyses show that results are robust across families with children of different ages and to account for nonrandom selection into the sample of library users, socioeconomic differences in children's reading skills, and the impact of library lockdowns due to Covid-19. I conclude that stratification in library book selection is more prominent concerning the voraciousness with which highly educated parents provide reading inputs (more books) than how discriminating they are in terms of selecting developmentally appropriate books.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental gradient
• parents’ reading inputs
• library books
• learning environment
• stratification
• registry data

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgments

The research leading to the results presented in this paper has received funding from the VELUX Foundations (grant number 00017000). I would like to thank participants at research seminars at the University of Copenhagen, the RC28 Spring conference 2021 and the American Sociological Association summer conference 2021 for helpful comments and feedback. I would particularly like to thank Mads Meier Jæger, and Kristian Bernt Karlson for comments on previous versions of the paper. Finally, I would like to thank Statistics Denmark and DBC (Danish Bibliographic Centre) for providing the registry and metadata used in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2022.2095796)

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 I exclude audiobooks because one of the main indicators capturing developmentally appropriate books (LIX count) relates to children’s ability to read written text and hence is not relevant for audiobooks.

2 The appropriate age range of books is shown when ordering or searching for books online or if books are borrowed as e-books. Often, the information will also be printed on the back of books and/or be indicated by their physical placement in the library.

3 Figs. 1a and 1b indicate that nonlinear associations between the amount of books borrowed and education/income might be relevant. In Online appendix Figs. A1 and A2, I estimate the gradients, including a squared term for income and education, and test a model using educational categories rather than years of education. Overall, these specifications support the main findings.

4 In the supplementary analyses (see Online appendix Table A2), I additionally control for the most used library branch to control for differences in selection patterns driven by what is available at local libraries or how they present (developmentally appropriate) books to families. The results are robust to this specification. I do not implement this approach in the main analyses, as this would mean conditioning on a collider to the extent that families might self-select into areas with particular book preferences or library facilities.

5 The sample size is higher in Table 3 because the sample selection model use information on the full population, including those who have not used libraries. The sample size is lower in the LIX-appropriate analysis as this is conditional on families with at least one child in grades 0–6.

6 The sample size is lower in the first three models in Table 4 compared to Table 2 due to conditioning on (having information on) reading skills. In the fourth and sixth models, the sample size is similar to the main analyses, whereas the sample size is again lower in the fifth and seventh models due to conditioning on reading skills.

7 In the supplementary analyses (Online appendix Table A4a-A4c), I restrict the sample to only-child families, which incurs further sample selection, but ensures that the child taking the reading test and receiving the book is the same. The results are similar to those presented in Table 4.

8 The estimate of the educational gradient in the amount of books drops when controlling for children’s reading skills. However, this is largely due to changes in sample selection. Conditioning on knowing children’s reading skills also means conditioning on families having older children (who have taken the tests), and the supplementary analyses (Online appendix Table A3) show that educational gradients in the amount of books borrowed are smaller in families with older children.

9 In the models on the share of books that are ‘too old/young’ for children in the family, I did not include the squared term for reading skills, as we would here expect families with skilled children to borrow more books that are ‘too old’ and fewer that are ‘too young,’ and we would expect the opposite for families with less skilled children.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Velux Fonden: [grant number 00017000].

Notes on contributors

Ea Hoppe Blaabæk

Ea Hoppe Blaabæk is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Sociology. The present paper is part of her dissertation on parents role in shaping inequality in children's reading. Key research interests include: intergenerational transmissions, stratification, and applied quantitative methods.