Asian Children’s Verbal Development: A Comparison of Three Countries

Using longitudinal data from three countries - the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia – we document White-Asian differences in verbal development from early to middle childhood to assess whether the Asian academic advantage extends to verbal skills during childhood. We find that the children of Asian immigrant mothers do not have a clear advantage over Whites. Rather, how they perform seems to be age and context specific. In the United States, Asian children begin school with higher verbal scores than Whites, but their advantage erodes over time. In the United Kingdom and Australia, Asian children show an initial disadvantage at school entry, but their scores grow at a faster rate and converge towards those of White children. Much of the observed White-Asian difference in verbal development is due to differences in parents’ socioeconomic status.