Word gap

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The term 30-million-word gap (often shortened to just word gap) was originally coined by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley in their book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,^[1] and subsequently reprinted in the article "The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3".^[2] In their study of 42 Midwestern families, Hart and Risley physically recorded an hour's worth of language in each home once a month over 2½ years. Families were classified by socioeconomic status (SES) into "high" (professional), "middle/low" (working class) and "welfare" SES. They found that the average child in a professional family hears 2,153 words per waking hour, the average child in a working-class family hears 1,251 words per hour, and an average child in a welfare family only 616 words per hour. Extrapolating, they stated that, "in four years, an average child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family 13 million words."^[2]

The authors found a correlation between word exposure and the rate of vocabulary acquisition in the subject children. The recordings showed that high-SES toddlers spoke approximately two new words a day between their second and third birthdays, middle-/low-SES children one word per day, and welfare SES children 0.5 words per day. Spoken words are a measure of productive vocabulary. It is thought that during children's vocabulary development the productive vocabulary mirrors their underlying receptive vocabulary growth.

The authors and subsequent researchers have posited that the word gap—or certainly the differing rates of vocabulary acquisition—partially explains the achievement gap in the United States, the persistent disparity in educational performance among subgroups of U.S. students, especially subgroups defined by socioeconomic status and race.^[3]