B. Hart and Risley (1995) state that by the time a child is four years old, the effect of differences in home experiences on early literacy skill development is apparent. They estimate that an average child with professional parents has heard 30 million more words, 600,000 more encouragements and 100,000 fewer discouragements than a similar child on welfare. Thus, with this difference in experience, there is a greater chance that children from low-income homes will encounter more difficulties with language learning and literacy in school, when compared to their peers from other socioeconomic classes.

Smith and Dixon (1995) studied the academic abilities of preschool children from low-income families. They found that the children were failing to acquire literacy skills at a level judged to be comparable to that of their middle-class peers. These researchers discovered that children from low-income homes were not read to as often in their early years as children from middle class homes, nor did they engage in meaningful interactions with text as frequently as their middle class counterparts. Almost 75 percent of the parents of the middle class reported reading daily to their children, while those from the lower class reported reading a maximum of once each week.

Chaney (1994) suggests that both family income and maternal education correlate highly with the types of literacy-related activities that are promoted at home. That is, she infers that the home practices in low-income homes and in those homes with mothers with limited education do not support the development of the types of skills that are critical for literacy learning and success at school. Chaney explains that due to their restricted access to literacy materials and fewer travel opportunities that help to enrich literacy, children from low-income homes may not have the same experiences with language and literacy as children from advantaged homes. She also found that more family members read for pleasure in the upper middle class homes compared to the lower class ones. Heath (1983) stresses that although low-income families may be as verbal as those from other socioeconomic classes, the types of interactions in low-income homes may vary considerably from the decontextualized language of the school and this places children from low-income homes at a disadvantage.