While state government spending on early education has grown in recent years, accessibility of preschool programs for rural children remains a problem. Using census-tract data from a nationally-representative data set on U.S. children, multinomial logit estimation reveals significant differences in early education experiences between rural and nonrural children. Both rural children and children of less-educated mothers are less likely to participate in preschool. This paper concludes by discussing the appropriate role of local, state, or federal governments in funding rural preschool programs. While early educational investments are being touted as effective economic development tools, the nature of the positive externalities associated with preschool makes it unlikely that any single rural community would invest in high-quality programs without state or federal assistance.

There is a body of evidence that shows that early education improves cognitive and social development for children while they are still attending, but the longer-term impacts depend on the quality of early education. Much of this evidence in England relates to a period when attendance rates at early education were around 60 per cent. Since then, early education has expanded through the guarantee of free provision for three- and four-year-olds, such that attendance at early education is now almost universal. This paper uses data from the Millennium Cohort Study to consider whether, in an era of near universal provision, early education is still associated with detectable improvements in outcomes for children. The analysis focuses on attainment in Key Stage 1 assessments when children were aged seven and finds that the overall impact of early education on Key Stage 1 attainment is modest, but that the impact is generally greater for those children who experienced poverty when they entered early education.