How does SES influence reading performance?

By Winnie Tam, Centre for University and School Partnership, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Jiahui Li and colleagues at Shaanxi Normal University in China and The University of Texas at Austin explored the correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and reading ability. They proposed that SES indirectly affects reading ability through two linguistic skills, namely, phonological awareness (PA) and vocabulary knowledge (VK). Toexamine this proposed mediation role, they employed meta-analytic structural equation modeling in a meta-analysis based on 385 studies involving  participants aged 2 to 17 years.

Results revealed that SES had significant direct effect on linguistics skills and reading outcomes: SES influenced students’ reading both directly and through its impact on phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Age, SES, and writing system were identified as moderating variables. Specifically:

• The effect of vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy and reading comprehension increased with age.
• Phonological awareness had a stronger effect on reading accuracy in alphabetic languages (e.g., English) compared to logographic languages (i.e., Chinese).
• Similarly, the influence of verbal knowledge on reading comprehension was stronger in alphabet languages than in the logographic language.

• Meta-analysis
• Reading comprehension
• Socioeconomic status