Lillian Mongeau: You've dedicated yourself to the issue of caring for young children for 40 years at this point. Why is early childhood such an important issue for you?

Hillary Clinton: Every child deserves the chance to fulfill their God-given potential. In law school, I was deeply inspired by Marian Wright Edelman’s work to give children the best possible start in life, and it led me to the Yale Child Study Center. After law school, I went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund, where I documented the challenges facing children with disabilities. Later, I had the opportunity to apply these ideas in Arkansas when I helped launch a home visiting program called HIPPY, which teaches parents to be their kids’ first teachers.

In the 1990s, scientific breakthroughs led us to understand more about early brain development and the importance of early learning from birth. I lifted up this scientific research as first lady by hosting the first ever White House conference on early learning and brain development, and then fought for the creation of Early Head Start to help low-income children receive the support they need from infancy. As a Senator, I called for a national pre-K initiative to provide funding to states to establish high-quality pre-K programs. And, after I left the State Department, I started a program called “Too Small to Fail,” to raise awareness about the “word gap,” which refers to the fact that children from higher-income families hear 30 million more words than their low-income peers by the time they are 3 years old. As a result, higher-income children start school with double the vocabulary. But we know that parental awareness coupled with real early learning supports can close this word gap.

Just last week we learned that our collective efforts have paid off: researchers from Stanford University, Columbia University and the University of Virginia found that from 1998 to 2010, the school readiness gap between low-income and high-income children shrunk by 10 percent in math and 16 percent in reading. They attributed this narrowing of the school readiness gap to the collective investments our country has made in preschool and the awareness we have brought to low-income parents who may not have previously known the importance of talking, reading and singing to their children from birth to engage their brains during this critical time.

Throughout my career, I have been guided by a strong belief, backed by rigorous research, that what happens in the early years has a profound effect on overall child well-being and success in school and life—and that every child deserves a fair shot at achieving their dreams, no matter what they look like or where they are born.

Mongeau: The title of our series, “Little To Nothing,” is a reference to how much we invest in the country's youngest children. You've visited many other developed countries and know how far behind we are. What is your perspective on why other OECD countries are spending so much more on young children than we are in the U.S.?