Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p> Background. The association between home learning resources and early mathematics achievement is among the most well-documented findings in international large-scale assessment research, yet whether national family policies shape that association remains poorly understood. Paid parental leave might compress socioeconomic gaps in early skills by allowing lower-resource families to invest more time in their young children. This possibility has rarely been tested directly. We therefore ask whether paid parental leave duration moderates the home-resource gradient across diverse education systems. Methods. We linked the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2019 Grade 4 database (39 education systems, <italic>N</italic> = 162,393 students) to OECD and International Labour Organization data on paid parental leave in full-rate equivalent weeks and to World Bank indicators of national income and female labour force participation. Within each system, we estimated the home-resource gradient by fitting a weighted least-squares regression to each of the five mathematics plausible values and pooling the coefficients and standard errors using Rubin’s rules. We synthesized the 39 slopes by random-effects meta-analysis and tested paid leave duration as a moderator in an inverse-variance-weighted meta-regression adjusting for mean gross domestic product per capita and female labour force participation, averaged over 2018–2020. Results. Average mathematics achievement rose with home resources in every paid-leave setting. Low-resource children in short-leave countries scored 332 points on average, compared with 589 points for high-resource children in long-leave countries. The home-resource gradient was positive and statistically significant in 37 of 39 systems, ranging from 4.92 points per standard deviation in the Philippines to 45.71 in Turkey. The moderation effect of country-level paid parental leave was not statistically significant ( <italic>b</italic> = -0.016, <italic>p</italic> = .705). Conclusions. Home learning resources were strongly associated with children’s mathematics achievement across all paid-leave settings. Longer paid parental leave, by itself, was not linked to smaller gaps between children with fewer and greater home resources once national economic conditions were considered. This does not mean paid leave is unimportant, but that extending leave alone may not reduce inequalities in early mathematics. Progress may also require improving children’s everyday learning opportunities at home and school </p>