Investing In Our Children: What We Know And Don't Know About The Costs And Benefits Of Early Childhood Interventions

In Investing in Our Children: What We Know and Don't Know About the Costs and Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions, the authors find that well-targeted early intervention programs for at-risk children, such as nurse home visits to first-time mothers and high-quality preschool education, can yield substantial advantages to participants in terms of emotional and cognitive development, education, economic well-being, and health. This unbiased study details the benefits and savings generated by documented intervention programs and finds that, if the successes of these programs can be duplicated on a large scale, public investment in such programs will benefit not only the children and their families, but also the taxpayers who fund them. As more children reach their full potential as active contributors to the economy, the government will see long-term savings in the form of lower welfare payments, higher tax revenues, and lower criminal justice system costs. The authors, however, highlight that these conclusions rest primarily on smaller-scale model programs and call for broader demonstrations and rigorous evaluations of future large-scale programs. There is increasing evidence that the first few years after birth are particularly important in child development and present opportunities for enrichment but also vulnerabilities do to poverty and other social stressors. Elected officials have begun proposing potentially costly programs to intervene early in the lives of disadvantaged children. Have such interventions been demonstrated to yield substantial benefits? To what extent might they pay for themselves through lower welfare and criminal justice costs incurred by participating children as they grow into adults? This study synthesizes the results of a number of previous evaluations in an effort to answer those questions. Conclusions are that under carefully controlled conditions, early childhood interventions can yield substantial advantages to recipients in terms of emotional and cognitive development, education, economic well-being, and health. (The latter two benefits apply to the children's families as well.) If these interventions can be duplicated on a large scale, the costs of the programs could be exceeded by subsequent savings to the government. However, the more carefully the interventions are targeted to children most likely to benefit, the more likely it is that savings will exceed costs. Unfortunately, these conclusions rest on only a few methodologically sound studies. The authors argue for broader demonstrations accompanied by rigorous evaluations to resolve several important unknowns. These include the most efficient ways to design and target programs, the extent to which effectiveness is lost on scale-up, and the implications of welfare reform and other "safety net" changes This study quantified the benefits to children and parents participating in nine early intervention programs and conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the Perry Preschool and the Elmira Prenatal/Early Infancy Project (PEIP). The findings indicated that early intervention programs led to the following advantages for program participants relative to those in the control groups: (1) gains in child emotional or cognitive development or improved parent-child relationships; (2) improvements in educational process and child outcomes; (3) increased economic self-sufficiency, initially for parents and later for children; (4) reduced criminal activity; and (5) improvements in health-related indicators. Savings to government programs were much higher than the costs for the Perry Preschool; this was also true for the higher-risk families of the PEIP. For lower-risk participants of the PEIP, however, government savings were not enough to offset program costs. (Two appendices detail the benefit cost analysis. Contains 159 references.) (KB) Lynn A. Karoly ... [et Al.] ; Funded By A Grant From The California Wellness Foundation. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 143-159).