A new study has found one-in-four pre-school children are developmentally delayed when it comes to early learning and health - including things like early literacy, emotional knowledge, and fine motor skills.
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Researchers behind the Growing Up in New Zealand long-term study also looked at the acute and chronic health problems experienced by the more than 6000 children who took part.
They found large socio-economic and ethnic inequities in children's developmental health status before they reached school age - children from poorer families, whose parents spoke English as a second language, Māori and Pacific children, and those who had difficulty accessing healthcare were more likely to be disadvantaged.
Lead researcher Dr Jin Russell said the study expanded understanding of how poverty shaped children's lives.
"Where families were experiencing more socio-economic disadvantages and more hardship, it was much more likely for children to be experiencing suboptimal development and health at age four-and-a-half."
Russell said about 3 percent of children had multiple problems with their development, and about 5 percent had chronic ill-health.
"But then we also found this group of about 20 percent of children who were just lagging behind other kids in terms of their early learning skills, and that's concerning because that's a lot of children."
She said the findings showed the more socio-economic disadvantages mothers reported before the child was born, the more likely the child was to be developmentally delayed.
The findings showed reading to young children made it more likely for them to have flourishing developmental health, Russell said.
Lead researcher Dr Jin Russell said the study expands understanding of how poverty shapes children's lives. Photo: Supplied
On a broader scale, she said they showed the need to invest in families with young children.
"We need to put a lot of investment into early childhood to help overcome these inequities so that children can reach their full developmental potential. That means tackling things like child poverty, and it also means strengthening our Well Child Tamariki Ora system."
Fixing disparities in early development was crucial to reducing health and educational inequities over a person's lifetime, Russell said.