A Digital Library for Parent-Child Shared Reading Improves Literacy Skills for Young Disadvantaged Children

The literacy skill gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children emerges well before children begin compulsory schooling. The gap in reading to young children by parental education is the largest among a set of investment activities generally considered relevant for young children’s literacy skill development. One promising area to help close this gap that deserves more policy attention is the role of a digital library that provides books and addresses behavioral barriers to parental reading time. This paper presents results from an 11-month randomized controlled trial that evaluated the impact of providing a digital library for parent-child shared reading on the literacy skills of low-income children aged three to five. The digital library included 200 books and, for a randomly assigned subset of parents, incorporated behaviorally informed goal-setting and reminder messages. Access to the digital library alone led to a significant improvement of 0.29 standard deviations in children’s literacy skills compared to families who did not receive it. However, the behavioral messages offered no additional benefit beyond the library itself. These findings demonstrate how educational technology designed for home use can effectively support early literacy development and help address disparities in children’s learning outcomes.