Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences · Economics of Early Education

Economics of Early Education

Item

Title: Economics of Early Education
Author: Steven Barnett, W.
Research Area: Social Institutions
Topic: Educational Institutions
Abstract: Economic research has established that public investments in early childhood programs providing education can yield high rates of return. A substantial portion of these returns are spillover effects that benefit society generally but not the child and family creating a classic instance of market failure. Benefits include improvements in school progress and achievement, health and health behaviors, social behavior, and employment and earnings for children and improvements in maternal employment and career paths. The weight of the evidence indicates that disadvantaged children benefit more than others. While programs can produce benefits from increased maternal employment (child care function) as well as from improved child development (education function), child development benefits look to be the larger part of the potential gain. Studies of large‐scale public policies and programs find much smaller benefits indicating that there may be substantial government failure in putting this knowledge into practice. One point that is immediately obvious is that public programs often fail to replicate the successful programs from research because government funds them inadequately. However, this is not the only problem as the costs and benefits of programs depend on the details of policy and program design and implementation. These details are not all well understood. Recent research has provided some insights, but has by no means answered all the key questions definitively. Key issues for further research include the advantages and disadvantages of means‐tested v. universal programs, and the nature and size of investments that are most productive at each age.
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Identifier: etrds0092
extracted text: Economics of Early Education
W. STEVEN BARNETT

Abstract
Economic research has established that public investments in early childhood programs providing education can yield high rates of return. A substantial portion of
these returns are spillover effects that benefit society generally but not the child and
family creating a classic instance of market failure. Benefits include improvements
in school progress and achievement, health and health behaviors, social behavior,
and employment and earnings for children and improvements in maternal employment and career paths. The weight of the evidence indicates that disadvantaged children benefit more than others. While programs can produce benefits from increased
maternal employment (child care function) as well as from improved child development (education function), child development benefits look to be the larger part of the
potential gain. Studies of large-scale public policies and programs find much smaller
benefits indicating that there may be substantial government failure in putting this
knowledge into practice. One point that is immediately obvious is that public programs often fail to replicate the successful programs from research because government funds them inadequately. However, this is not the only problem as the costs and
benefits of programs depend on the details of policy and program design and implementation. These details are not all well understood. Recent research has provided
some insights, but has by no means answered all the key questions definitively. Key
issues for further research include the advantages and disadvantages of means-tested
v. universal programs, and the nature and size of investments that are most productive at each age.

INTRODUCTION
Until relatively recently, most investments in the education of children
under the age of five were through informal interactions in the home.
With economic development, home investments in the education of young
children have increased, and investments in formal education outside the
home have increased even more dramatically. The past half century has seen
tremendous growth in early care and education globally. This expansion
has been supported by public, as well as private, funding, and governments
now make substantial investments in many countries. The range of public
programs for early education include such parenting supports as nurse
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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home visitation, child care, and the inclusion of younger children in public
education. Public programs often have as an important goal increasing
the equality of investment in human development and improving the life
course for young children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Nevertheless,
most developed countries (but not the United States), and many developing
nations, make such investments through universal public programs that are
open to all families.
From an economic perspective early education in all its forms produces a
joint product with at least two differentiated outcomes—education and care.
Education is an activity designed to enhance learning and development.
It should not be viewed as narrowly academic but as concerned with the
development of the whole child—cognitive, social, emotional, and physical.
Care is itself an ambiguous term because while it means to “provide for
another’s needs” and often implies an emotional connection, the term child
care has also come to refer to a more limited custodial function of child
watching that ensures that a child is safe, but may not provide for any of
a child’s other needs. While education may be viewed as supplementing
rather than replacing parental efforts, child care in the custodial sense
when it is not provided by a parent is designed to enable parents to pursue
other activities, principally other work. Regardless of the label applied
to an arrangement—parenting, child minding, child care, nursery school,
Head Start, Sure Start, early education, preschool and pre-K—all of these
activities can provide both care and education, though the proportions of
each product vary within and by type of arrangement.
The economics of early education is most often thought of as concerned
with the economic returns to public investments. As important as that topic
is, economics has also been making contributions toward understanding how
parents make decisions regarding their own and others, services, how these
decisions interact with decisions regarding employment, and the effects of
alternative public policy approaches on parental decisions and children’s
early education including the effects of child allowances, care and education
subsidies, and direct public provision of services. Economics also is providing insights into the effects of early education policies, including intervention
programs designed for specific disadvantaged populations, and into the processes through which the initial effects of early education lead to lifelong
transformations of human development.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Modern research on the importance of early education for child development owes much to a burst of experimental studies that began in the 1960s
stimulated by research on the malleability of intelligence and the effects of

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the social environment on opportunities to learn, motivation, and other contributors to knowledge and skills. Long-term follow-ups provided evidence
that early education could have persistent developmental effects well beyond
intelligence and significantly alter life courses. Indeed, most of these early
studies found that effects on intelligence (as measured by IQ) did not persist
beyond a few years. This finding has been replicated in many studies since,
but two key points regarding the finding are not always recognized. First,
even with transitory IQ effects, studies typically found persistent gains in
academic achievement (subject matter specific knowledge and skills), educational attainment, and a variety of social and emotional aspects of development. Second, educational interventions that began in the first year of life
and continued to school entry did produce persistent IQ gains.
One of the experimental studies begun in the early 1960s provided the
basis for the first and most far-reaching comprehensive benefit–cost analysis
of early education. The Perry Preschool study pre-dates Head Start and other
large-scale public preschool programs in the United States. Participants
were economically disadvantaged 3- and 4-year-olds randomly assigned to
treatment and control groups. The intervention group attended a 2 1∕2 h per
day, intensive educational program with highly qualified teachers in small
classes for up to two years. The 123 low-income children in the study have
been followed through age 40 (Schweinhart et al., 2005). Positive effects on
cognitive test scores were observed from ages 3 through 27, but the persistent
effects were found on achievement, not on IQ. In addition, the intervention
group evidenced better classroom and personal behavior from their first
years of school followed by lower youth misconduct and crime. Other
positive schooling outcomes were fewer years of special education years,
and a higher rate of on-time high school graduation. Positive adult outcomes
include increased earnings, decreased welfare dependency, reduced arrests
and decreases in risky behavior that could lead to poorer health outcomes.
Benefit–cost analysis of results from the Perry Preschool study was first
based on follow-up data through age 10. Owing to the limited follow-up, this
analysis was primarily based on projections, but indicated that benefits were
likely to exceed costs. This led to a series of benefit-cost analyses that Steven
Barnett and colleagues built off this early work to estimate economic benefits based on data through age 19, then age 27, and most recently age 40. As
the duration of follow-up increased, these benefit–cost analyses increasingly
relied more on actual outcome estimates for educational costs, delinquency
and crime, social services use, and the value of individual productivity as
measured by employer willingness to pay for labor and less on projections.
As projections are made only through age 65, the estimated economic returns
in the most recent studies depended more heavily on actual results than on
projections.

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The benefit–cost analyses of the Perry Preschool represented a departure
from much previous practice in the economics of education in expanding the
estimation of benefits beyond earnings. While economists had pointed out
that there were many other benefits from education for which economic value
could be estimated, this had been rare, and it continues to be the exception
rather than common practice in estimating the returns to educational investments. Beyond indicating that the benefits were much larger than the costs of
the program these analyses provided two other key insights. First, the largest
part of the economic benefit was from impacts on outcomes other than earnings, crime in particular, but there were other areas such as reduced costs for
special education (as less was needed). Second, most of the economic benefits accrued to the general public rather than to the participants and their
families. In other words, the spillover benefits, or what economists call “externalities,” accounted for most of the benefits and were quite large.
Although these results are widely known, some confusion has resulted
from the variation in estimates of the return and the way in which has been
reported over time. As new estimates appeared over time they changed, primarily because benefit estimates increased as conservative projections were
replaced by estimated effects at later ages. In addition, results have been
reported as benefit–cost ratios with a range of ratios based on alternative
assumptions at each follow-up, and results have also been reported as rates
of return. Multiple benefit–cost ratios are presented that vary depending on
the discount (interest) rate used to take into account the opportunity costs
of resources over time (a dollar today is worth more than one 20 years from
now). As economists disagree about what is the most appropriate rate, a
range of rates is typically used. For example, at the age 40 follow-up, the
estimated benefit–cost ratio was $17 to 1 with a discount rate of 3% and $7
to 1 with a discount rate of 7%. The estimated annual rate of return was
18%. Under more conservative assumptions regarding benefit estimates the
ratio was as low as $4.5 to 1 and the rate of return would be correspondingly
lower.
More recently, economists have begun adding even more estimates to the
mix. Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald estimated a real rate of return of 16%.
James Heckman and colleagues have updated the statistical methodology
for estimates underlying the benefit–cost analysis, estimated statistical confidence intervals for the economic returns, and produced estimated rates of
return of between 7% and 10%. These differ from earlier estimates owing
to differences in assumptions, for example, about the value of crime or the
costs of taxes, rather than differences in the underlying estimates. Of course,
the uncertainty surrounding these and earlier estimated rates of return is
substantial. The most accurate answer to the benefit–cost question really is
that in this study benefits were large relative to cost. More importantly, none

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of the Perry Preschool benefit cost estimates can be directly generalized to
large-scale public policies and programs. This is a major challenge as will be
discussed below.
A second well-known randomized trial of early education followed the
Perry Preschool a decade later. This is the Abecedarian study which has
studied 111 children through age 30. In this study children from economically disadvantaged families were randomized at birth. The treatment
group attended center-based, educational child care for a full work day,
year-round through the age of five. Positive effects were observed on IQ
and on reading and math achievement in the short and long terms. Children
who attended the program had lower rates of grade retention and special
education and increased rates of higher education attainment. Positive
effects were also found for health-related behaviors and for symptoms of
depression (Campbell et al., 2012). In addition, because (unlike the Perry
Preschool) the Abecedarian program was an effective provider of child
care, benefits were estimated for effects on maternal productivity in the
labor force. Unfortunately, the immediate impacts on maternal labor force
participation during the program were not measured. However, impacts
on earnings were measured in later years, and these indicate a substantial
increase, likely because of greater attachment to the labor force during
the early years (Barnett & Masse, 2007). Once again benefits were large
relative to costs and spillovers were considerable. However, the estimated
returns were considerably smaller than in the Perry study because of both
higher costs and lower benefits, $2.5 dollars per dollar invested. One reason
benefits were lower is that no significant impacts were found on crime and
delinquency, but costs are much higher per year and extend over more years,
as well.
A third landmark study in this field was conducted another decade later,
a longitudinal study of the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, which provided
part-day early education through the public schools to disadvantaged children on a large-scale. Effects were estimated by comparisons to children in
similar neighborhoods where the program was not available. Although providing less certainty than a randomized trial that the impact estimates are
unbiased, it measures the effects of a program under more typical conditions
and at a program intensity and cost consistent with public schooling in the
United States more generally. The pattern of effects is remarkably similar to
that in the Perry study, and, to a lesser extent, the Abecedarian study, though
effects tend to be somewhat smaller. In addition to increased test scores there
were reductions in grade repetition and special education as well as increases
in high school completion and decreases in arrest rates. Benefit estimates

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remain proportionate to the lower costs so that the benefit–cost ratio estimated by Arthur Reynolds, Judy Temple and colleagues exceeded 10 to 1
and the estimated annual rate of return was 18%.
Another approach to increasing investment in early education is to support
better parental care and education of the child. This can be done through
home visiting or bringing parents in to a center where they may be worked
with in groups. Such efforts often have failed to produce substantive results
in randomized trials. However, there have been a number of exceptions
including a number of programs that focus on the parents of children
with identified problems. Programs targeting disadvantaged families more
generally that have been identified as successful in producing long-term
impacts with clear economic benefits include the Nurse Family Partnership
in the United States, a Turkish early enrichment program for mothers, and
a nutritional supplementation and home stimulation program studied in
Jamaica.
The Nurse Family Partnership now has three fairly large randomized trials with long-term follow-up, the longest now reaching to adulthood. Several benefit cost analyses of the Nurse Family Partnership program have
found benefit cost ratios exceeding $2 to 1. Child benefits included improved
achievement, decreased injury, abuse and neglect, and fewer arrests. Using
the most recent trial data, one study found a benefit cost ratio of 3 to 1 just
through the age 9 follow-up with benefits to both mothers (primarily) and
children. As this study estimated a broader range of early benefits than the
others, it suggests that even larger returns might be found in a similarly broad
analysis using data from the longer-term follow-ups.
If the economic case for public investment in early education rested on
the studies reviewed above alone, its foundation would be interesting,
but nevertheless fairly narrow. Fortunately, there is a much larger body
of research that has established that early education can produce a wide
range of immediate and persistent effects on cognitive, social, and emotional development. A fair number of randomized trials in a wide range
of countries, not just the United States, provide a strong basis for causal
claims. Results include short- and long-term improvements in cognitive
abilities including educational achievement, school progress, pro-social and
anti-social behaviors, executive functions, delinquency, crime, mental health,
and health related behaviors. Generally, effects decline in the years after
children leave early education, and persistent effects are associated with
relatively large initial impacts. In developing country contexts, impacts from
early childhood programs on nutrition, health, and physical development
are common; programs producing these impacts typically have nutrition
components, and somewhat less frequently health services, as well as
education.

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CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Despite the overwhelmingly positive effects of early education on child
development that have been found by research overall, the evidence with
respect to the impacts of large-scale public programs has been much
more mixed. In the United States, randomized trials of major educational
programs for disadvantaged children such as Early Head Start and Head
Start revealed weak initial impacts with little or no long-term improvements in any domain of development. (With respect to Head Start, some
researchers suggest that it is too soon to conclude that the program does
not pass a benefit cost test because even though effects are small they
are underestimated by intent to treat analyses and even small effects can
have substantial value.) Results are even less positive for public subsidies
of low cost child care; results range from very small positive to modest
negative effects on child development. Similar decreases in some outcomes
are evident for home visitation models, as well. Outside the United States,
results are similarly mixed. Some public programs are found to produce
long-term gains in cognitive abilities, educational achievement, and adult
earnings. Other programs are found to produce null or even negative effects.
It should be noted that public programs not replicating the results from
research on small-scale programs failed to replicate either the funding or
the design of the successful models, typically having much less qualified
teachers and many more teacher per child. However, as with the economics
of education generally there are a substantial number of studies that fail to
find a relationship between such program features and outcomes.
In view of the results found when moving from carefully controlled studies to large-scale policy implementation, two issues have been particularly
important for recent research in the economics of early education. One is estimating the returns to large-scale programs and policies across a wide range
of social and economic contexts. The other is increasing our understanding
of the conditions under which returns are high as well as when they are not.
Large impacts and high rates of return have been found in high, medium,
and low income countries around the globe. Across all these contexts benefits
have been found to vary with the level of family disadvantage and program
design. In fact the two interact as the effectiveness of early education depends
on the formal program providing higher quality than is available in the home;
clearly this is easier to accomplish for disadvantaged families that provide
fewer resources because parents are less educated or do not know the language of schooling.
A key rationale for public funding of early education (and other supports
for early development) is the evidence of the large human and economic
costs from poor child development and the potential for early education to

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alter these poor developmental trajectories. These include the costs of grade
repetition and special or remedial education, poor health, low productivity
in the work force, and high involvement in delinquency and crime. The high
rates of return documented for early education programs that prevent these
problems indicate that parents, particularly low-income parents, invest
too little in high quality early education from a societal perspective. As
most of the economic benefits just listed are in large part spillovers that
do not accrue to the low-income families, but to the larger community,
families have little economic incentive to invest more in early education
even if this was an affordable option. Governments, on the other hand,
have a very strong reason to invest in such early education, particularly for
low-income families and others for whom effects and spillovers are large
(e.g., migrants and parents with very limited capabilities). Public investment
has increased globally, and this evidence may have contributed to that
increase.
To date most of the research on returns to large-scale public programs has
focused on earnings benefits to children and parents. Oklahoma was first in
the United States to achieve essentially universal coverage at age four. That
program is estimated to produce earnings benefits that are 3 or 4 times the
cost of the program and rates of return of 6–7%. Other work has indicated
that adult earnings increases from attending Head Start and other pre-K programs in the United States could exceed the cost of the program. Research
in other developed economies has found increased adult earnings but has
not estimated rates of return. For middle and low income countries it has
been estimated that increasing preschool education enrollments in low- to
middle-income countries from 25% to 50% would yield a benefit-to-cost ratio
of between 6 and 17 to 1 based solely on increased earnings (Engle et al., 2011).
Studies of the effects on parental employment and earnings of public
programs to subsidize or provide early care and education have produced
mixed results. Most studies find positive effects on maternal employment.
However, the magnitude of the effect varies considerably across studies. A
few studies do not find positive effects on employment, primarily because
increased public investments may lead to a switch from informal and
privately paid arrangements to other forms (often classroom based) that
are publicly subsidized. The estimated magnitude of the switch also varies
substantially. Variations in findings seem likely to be due to the variations in
family structure, labor market conditions, other family policies, and specific
features of the public early childhood policy (such as whether they target
low-income, single parents).
As it has become clear that the details of policies matter a great deal for
the benefits, economic analysis has begun to examine these details. Research
in this vein includes studies of how parents make decisions (including joint

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decisions about employment and early education arrangements) as well
as how variations in program features affect costs and benefits. Features
examined in such studies include length of day, class size, and programs
to enhance classroom management. The Tennessee class size randomized
trial illustrates how complex the details can be. Reducing class size in
kindergarten (which would be preschool in many countries) had persistent
effects on achievement, and class size effects were larger for kindergarten
than later grades. Some studies indicated that minority children gained
more. One study suggested that small classes may produce their effects
primarily through eliciting greater effort rather than improved instruction,
while another indicated that better results in small classes were produced
only by more experienced teachers.
Economists also have begun to expand the range of benefits estimated
beyond those in previous studies. Such outcomes include effects on child
mortality and morbidity including obesity, quality of life, mental health,
and peer effects of all types. For example, a child’s own learning may
not be significantly affected by her classroom behavior, but the learning
of other children in the classroom is affected by her behavior. Estimated
peer effects even though modest are of practical significance because of
the numbers of children affected. Another benefit newly included is the
value of decreased inequalities. Preschool education has been found to raise
average achievement nationally while decreasing inequality in achievement.
In addition, to the direct value of decreased inequality to a nation’s citizens,
decreased inequality can contribute to greater social cohesion and economic
stability. Although early education is not by itself a solution to income or
gender inequalities, it can be one element of a broader strategy to increase
social equality.
With the expansion of large-scale public policies and programs, issues of
the systemic effects of such policies have begun to be addressed. One of
these issues is the extent to which public provision of preschool education
crowds out private provision rather than expanding access for children who
otherwise would not have attended a private program. Studies to date indicate that most of the take up in public programs in advanced economies is
a switch from private to public arrangements. Less clear is how the quality
of the public arrangements compares with the private and what the consequences are for child development. If the public support is for low quality
child care, impacts on child development can even be negative. If public programs are of higher quality then much of the gain may come from improving
outcomes for children who would have been in private programs and not
only from increased net enrollments.
Economists also have contributed to research on the mechanisms by which
the impacts of early education (and related services including nutrition

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where relevant) are translated into long-term impacts. Suggested pathways
to adult economic outcomes include snow-balling effects of early success
on motivation and effort, effects on meta-cognitive abilities and executive
function, and lasting impacts on family interactions. Which pathways to
long-term effects are activated depends on the nature of the educational
services provided. Recent studies have sought to identify the contributions
of general cognitive abilities, subject matter specific abilities, executive
functions, and other aspects of personal development including social and
emotional development. It seems clear that there are multiple paths and
that all educational programs do not activate all of these paths equally.
Even within a single domain such as social development program may have
differing effects; for example, programs can simultaneously increase aggression and sociability. Research strongly supports the view that cognitive
academic abilities are not the sole source of important long-term benefits
from early education.
KEY ISSUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Much remains to be learned about how to optimize the economic returns to
public investments in early education. Two questions where both costs and
benefits may loom large are: who should public programs serve and how
early should they start? Broad questions about the economics of universal
as opposed to means-tested programs go beyond the simple question of
whether early education produces larger gains for disadvantaged children
(and even this may not yet be definitively answered). Might benefits for
nondisadvantaged children nevertheless exceed costs? Do universal programs reach a much larger percentage of the disadvantaged population
because of practical difficulties of trying to enroll children continuously
based on transitory income? What about the effects on enrollment of parental
concern with stigma or negative peer effects in targeted programs? How
much does the willingness of the populace to support a quality educational
program depend on universal access?
With respect to age at start, the now ubiquitous “Heckman curve” portrays
returns to early education as declining exponentially with age. Yet, this curve
is not empirically derived. Meta-analyses do not find a consistent relationship between age and outcomes through age 5. The available benefit–cost
results indicate to the contrary that returns are lower before age three. Theoretical arguments for the curve appear to be based on rudimentary theories
of learning and are inconsistent with evidence from Heckman and colleagues
about the long-term malleability of “noncognitive” characteristics associated
with large benefits. The cost side seems not to have been considered, as costs
are higher for infant-toddler education. When comparing preschool returns

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to those for later education and training it has not been taken into account
that later estimates rarely include anything other than earnings effects, which
account for a small fraction of the preschool benefits. In addition, returns to
early education depend on later educational opportunities and, in general,
declining marginal returns are likely to affect all of the comparisons. Relative
returns should be expected to be quite different across countries depending on public investments in pre-primary, primary and secondary education
and parental investments beginning with pregnancy. Much more economic
research should be conducted on age at start despite popular opinion that
the question is settled.
Further research is needed to understand the production functions for
learning and development at home and in programs. Economic research
on this topic could be enriched by combining what economists have
learned about production functions generally with what cognitive science,
education, and psychology have learned about the processes of learning
and development. Such interdisciplinary work might be highly productive
for both development and testing of theory. Given how much remains
unknown, more progress might be made by designing and implementing
experiments to test theories about the production of long-term learning and
development gains from early education rather than to test or evaluating
or evaluating programs. Experimental studies also might provide clearer
answers to questions about the impacts of funding, teacher qualifications,
and teacher-child ratios than those relying on natural variation.
Given the extent to which the details of program design and implementation affect their costs and benefits, it also would be wise to shift away from
summative evaluation to systematic experimentation aimed at policy and
program improvement. As noted earlier, in evaluating benefits such studies should attend simultaneously to care and education, and outcomes for
parents and children. Such evaluations should not be thought of as one-time
studies, but as on-going systems designed to fine-tune policy and practice
from the local level on up to the national. Such studies might also illuminate
the reasons for implementation failure and help to identify adequate resource
levels (which permit but do not guarantee results) and other necessary features that together might constitute a sufficient basis for achieving policy and
program goals regarding benefits.

REFERENCES
Barnett, W. S., & Masse, L. N. (2007). Early childhood program design and economic
returns: Comparative benefit-cost analysis of the Abecedarian program and policy
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Campbell, F. A., Pungello, E. P., Burchinal, M., Kainz, K., Pan, Y., Wasik, B. H., …
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(2005). Lifetime effects: The High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40. Ypsilanti,
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FURTHER READING
Barnett, W. S. (2011). Effectiveness of early educational intervention. Science,
333(6045), 975–978.
Camilli, G., Vargas, S., Ryan, S., & Barnett, W. S. (2010). Meta-analysis of the effects of
early education interventions on cognitive and social development. Teachers College Record, 112(3).
Cunha, F., Heckman, J. J., Lochner, L., & Masterov, D. V. (2006). Interpreting the
evidence on life cycle skill formation. Handbook of the Economics of Education, 1,
697–812.
Herbst, C. M., & Tekin, E. (2010). Child care subsidies and child development. Economics of Education Review, 29, 618–638.
Haeck, C., Lefebvre, P., & Merrigan, P. (2012). Quebec’s universal childcare: The long
term impacts on parental labour supply and child development. Montreal: Economics,
University of Quebec.
Nores, M., & Barnett, W. S. (2010). Benefits of early childhood interventions across the
world: (Under) Investing in the very young. Economics of Education Review, 29(2),
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Economics of Early Education

13

W. STEVEN BARNETT SHORT BIOGRAPHY
W. Steven Barnett is a Board of Governors Professor and Director of the
National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. His research includes studies of the economics of early childhood
care and education (ECCE), the long-term effects of ECCE on children’s
learning and development, and ECCE policies. Dr. Barnett earned his PhD
in economics at the University of Michigan. He conducted several of the
early comprehensive benefit-cost analyses of preschool education and its
long-term consequences including in 1985 The Perry Preschool Program and
its long-term effects: A benefit-cost analysis. High/Scope Early Childhood Policy
Papers (No. 2) and in 1996 Lives in the Balance: Age 27 Benefit Cost Analysis of
the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program. Recent publications include “Effectiveness of early educational intervention” in Science and “Four reasons the
United States should offer every child a preschool education” in The pre-k
debates: current controversies and issues from Brookes Publishing.
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14

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