Parental socio-economic status directly affects the academic performance of children. Families enjoying high status are capable to provide their children the best available facilities. The families with low socio-economic status are incapable to do so due to socio-economic constraints. In the present research article attempt has been made to find the relationships between the two variables (the following is a synopsis of the main article).

Synopsis

A family’s socio-economic status is based on its income, parental education level, parental occupation, and social status in the community such as contacts within the community, group associations, and the community’s perception of the family (Demarest, Reisner, Anderson, Humphrey, Farquhar, and Stein, 1993). Families with high socio-economic status are more successful in preparing their young children for school because they typically have access to a wide range of resources to promote and support young children’s development. They are able to provide their young children with high-quality childcare, books, and toys to encourage children in various learning activities at home. Also, they have easy access to information regarding their children’s health, as well as social, emotional and cognitive development. In addition, families with high socio-economic status often seek information to help them prepare their young children for school.

Crnic and Lamberty (1994) discuss the impact of socio-economic status on children’ readiness for school: "The segregating nature of social class, ethnicity, and race may well reduce the variety of enriching experiences thought to be prerequisite for creating readiness to learn among children. Social class, ethnicity, and race entail a set of ‘contextual givens’ that dictate neighbourhood, housing, and access to resources that affects enrichment or deprivation as well as the acquisition of specific value systems." Ramey and Ramey (1994) described the relationship of family socio-economic status to children’s readiness for school: "Across all socio-economic groups, parents face major challenges when it comes to providing optimal care and education to their children. For poor families, these challenges can be formidable.

Sometimes, when basic necessities are lacking, parents must place top priority on housing, food, clothing, and health care. Educational toys, games and books may appear to be luxuries, and parents may not have the time, energy, or knowledge to find innovative and less-expensive ways to foster young children’s development. Even in families with above-average incomes, parents often lack the time and energy to invest fully in their children’s preparation for school, and they sometimes face a limited array of options of high-quality child care – both before their children start school and during the early school years" (p.195).

Families with low socio-economic status often lack the financial, social, and educational supports that characterise families with high socio-economic status.

Poor families also may have inadequate or limited access to community resources that promote and support children’s development and school readiness. Parents may have inadequate skills for such activities as reading to and with their children, and they may lack information about childhood immunisations and nutrition. Zill, Collins, West and Hausken (1995) state that, "low maternal education and minority-language status are most consistently associated with fewer signs of emerging literacy and a greater number of difficulties in preschoolers." Having inadequate resources and limited access to available resources can negatively affect families’ decisions regarding their young children’s development and learning. As a result, children from families with low socio-economic status are at a greater risk of entering kindergarten unprepared than their peers from families with median or high socio-economic status.

Socio-economic status and academic performance

Children from lower class tend to choose schools that have lower standard than those middle-class youth choose. "Children from lower class families more often than middle-class aspire to schooling they do not expect to be admitted, but the fact that lower-class siblings realise the remoteness of reaching their goal makes them lower their level of aspirations" (Reynolds, 1991). These poorer class students may have superior ability; they are just not offered the same opportunities that those from higher classes are offered.

According to Barber (1992), socio-economic status impacts parental efficacy and aspirations, therefore indirectly influencing their sibling’s educational future. Doge (1994) states that economic hardships affect student’s academic achievement through the influences of family processes because it can prevent parents from protecting children from risky environments that can compromise successful development. If economic hardships persist, children may be forced to part-time work in unhygienic environmental conditions to support the needs of their family. "When time is spent working, it displaces academic activities such as homework and engagement in other school-related activities" (Abell, 1996). This displacement results in a decreased interesting school, academic performance and it lowers their personal academic aspirations. "Students who are less able and have achieved at lower levels in the past are more likely to work longer hours, and, in turn, their present achievement is further negatively affected" (Russel 1994).

Many studies have found social class to be the single most effective predictor of achievement in school. As Robert James Parelius and Ann Parker Parelius (1987) put it: "Whether we look at scores on standardised ability or achievement tests, classroom grades, participation in academic, involvement in extracurricular activities, number of years of schooling completed or enrolment in or completion of college and professional school, children from more socio-economically advantaged homes outperform their less affluent peers" (256).

Aside from that fact, achievement is also affected by the experiences of the teachers for their students. There is considerable evidence that teachers expect less from lower class students, in terms of both academic achievement and behaviour, than they expect from others. Students respond to such expectations by underachieving and misbehaving. The expectation of low achievement thus acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy: students become what they are expected to become (IBID: 293-296). Some studies show that influents’ intellectual development is adversely affected if both parents work during the first year of life, but it can be enhanced by mothers who work outside the home thereafter. Therefore, many advocate more generous maternity/paternity leave (Raymond, (1991). The conclusion is that early childhood education is not a substitute for home care, but it can provide children with experiences that go beyond those received at home (Ochiltree, 1994).

Family background and academic achievement

Lower-class children live in a very different world from middle class children. The homes of the poor tend to have fewer books, newspapers, and magazines, and the parents have less education. People with low incomes are less likely to read for entertainment; thus, children in low-income homes are less likely to be encouraged to learn that vital skill. Lower classes families are also larger and are more often headed by only one adult.

Children in such families often receive less parental contact, guidance and educational encouragement. Another factor is health: Poor children are likely to be more undernourished than their middle class counterparts, and they are sick more days a year (Leonard and Lisa, 1987:634-646). And unhealthy children simply do not learn as well as healthy ones.

More positively, the academic success of children from affluent homes stems from the value their parents place on education. A number of surveys have shown that children from wealthy families want more education than children from poorer backgrounds. A part of this difference results from the fact that middle class homes place a higher value on education and long-range planning. But some of it also reflects a realistic adjustment by poor children to the fact that they have less chance of getting good education.

The literature on these factors in sociology and psychology is fairly extensive. The amount of cumulated research on the mechanisms, leading to the transmission of economic status from parents to their children, such as health and education, is even smaller. There is a large and growing body of literature on decisions related to children’s and young people’s educational choice and they observe rather limited intergenerational mobility in educational attainment and earnings (Mickelson, 1990; Deater, 1996). Most of the empirical literature on educational choice focuses on the estimation of simple discrete choice models that may be interpreted as reduced form human capital models, but which may also be given other interpretations e.g. sociological. In addition to parental background, the quality of schools may be important for educational and labour market outcomes for a survey. There is an extensive body of literature on whether different measures of school resources affect educational attainment and labour market outcomes. The majority of the studies find no or only minor systematic effects of school resources, whereas others find significant effects.