Inequalities in language competences may be more or less pronounced depending not only on the social or immigration background indicator under consideration, but can also differ in size when looking at different positions of the competence distribution. Based on a nationwide sample of about 5-year-old preschool children this paper examines three research questions in this context: (1) To what extent are differences by social class, educational background, income, and immigrant background visible in children’s vocabulary? (2) Do certain patterns of inequality exist along the distribution of competences? (3) To what extent can these patterns be explained by cumulative effects? These questions were investigated using quantile regression on data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The results show that differences are most pronounced with regard to parents’ levels of formal education and their immigration background and concentrate in the lower areas of the competence distribution. In contrast, children of different socioeconomic and immigrant background differ only little in higher quantiles of language competences. These patterns remain largely intact when controlling for covariates.

Keywords
Social inequalities; Language competences; Preschool children; Quantile regression; National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)