Cognitive Advantages of East Asian American Children: When Do Such Advantages Emerge and What Explains Them?

Abstract

Using three waves of panel data from 7,800 infants in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), the current study compares cognitive abilities of East Asian American children with those in six other racial/ethnic groups at the ages of nine months, two years, and four years. At the age of nine months, East Asian American infants score slightly lower than their peers in most other racial/ethnic groups, after demographic and socioeconomic factors are held constant. East Asian American children clearly make greater cognitive progress than their peers in all other non-European American groups between the ages of nine months and two years. By age four, East Asian American children outperform their peers in all other racial/ethnic groups in math and literacy tests by a large margin. The analyses also find that much of the cognitive advantages of East Asian Americans at the ages of two and four are explained by differences in parental resources.