The findings show that children who go on to claim Free School Meals are less likely to use their full entitlement to funded places than children not eligible for them.
The researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science found that almost one in five children delays taking up a free place in pre-school education, most of them from low-income families.
Around one third of 'persistently poor children' delayed, compared to one sixth of their higher-income peers.
They say that 'very little is known' about how take-up rates of the free entitlement vary for children from different backgrounds, and that there have been no nationwide studies to look at how duration varies by background.
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