Socioeconomic status (SES) remains a persistent determinant of inequality in access to and quality of early childhood education (ECE) globally. This study provides a cross-national comparative narrative review of how SES shapes ECE systems in Ghana, Nigeria, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Drawing on peer-reviewed literature, policy documents, and international datasets from 2000 to 2026, the review synthesizes evidence using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory as an organizing framework to examine how SES operates across microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem levels. Findings indicate that SES is consistently associated with disparities in ECE access, quality, and early developmental outcomes across all four countries, although the mechanisms of inequality differ by institutional context. In high-income contexts such as the United States and United Kingdom, SES-related disparities are largely driven by market-based provision structures, childcare costs, and stratified access to high-quality services. In Ghana and Nigeria, inequalities are more strongly shaped by constrained public investment, infrastructure limitations, and uneven distribution of qualified educators, alongside higher reliance on private provision. The review highlights significant asymmetry in the strength of available evidence, with longitudinal and nationally representative datasets more prevalent in high-income countries compared to largely cross-sectional and policy-based evidence in lower-middle-income contexts. While ECE expansion policies have improved enrollment globally, inequities in quality and outcomes persist. The study contributes a unified ecological systems framework for interpreting cross-national SES disparities in ECE, clarifies evidence limitations across contexts, and identifies policy-relevant mechanisms for reducing inequality through targeted investment, workforce development, and culturally responsive approaches.
Oladokun et al. (Mon,) studied this question.