Although early childhood programs are widely recognized as a promising mechanism to reduce the achievement gap before children arrive at public school, there is surprisingly little research on the efficacy of these programs. Measuring the long-term efficacy of these programs is limited by the scarcity of pilot programs and the difficulties of obtaining quality longitudinal data on the outcomes of these students.⁵⁵ Since these programs can be incredibly costly and therefore difficult for grassroots activists to “sell” to legislators, I focused on academic articles that analyze the tangible benefits that these programs provide. The existing literature on the outcomes of early childhood programs provides strong evidence of the potential that early childhood intervention has in mitigating the disadvantages that certain students and families face. I examined two scholarly articles that analyze these outcomes: first, “The Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program” by Garcia, Heckman, Leaf and Prados, and second, “Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity?” by Magnuson and Duncan. These articles highlight that early childhood development programs make a meaningful difference in the educational outcomes of students. Therefore, legislators should capitalize on this opportunity for a high-return low-risk investment in underserved student populations.

Garcia, Heckman, Leaf, and Prados (2016) discuss the positive long-term outcomes of two similar childcare programs that were rolled out in Chapel Hill and Durham North Carolina. Although the programs were rolled out in the 1970s and 1980s, the study was published in 2016 because students were tracked from birth to age 35, which allowed the researchers to incorporate a wide range of benefits into their analysis, including the implications that the program had on health outcomes, crime outcomes, labor force participation, special education costs, educational attainment, and parental employment.⁵⁶ The programs were directed at disadvantaged students—as identified by local social service agencies and hospitals⁵⁷–and provided childcare for over nine hours a day for fifty weeks spanning a period of five years.⁵⁸ The researchers found statistically significant results from the program that suggest it is more than worth its cost: although the program cost $18,514 annually per child, it “generated a benefit of 7.3 dollars for every dollar spent on it and lowers taxpayers total long-run costs by roughly 13 percent.⁵⁹ This astounding return incorporates the benefits that the program brings from numerous avenues, including substantially improved health outcomes, improved quality of life, significant reductions in crime, large education and employment gains for students, and increases in maternal income.

Magnuson and Duncan (2016) take an alternative approach to analyzing the economic benefits of early childhood education (ECE) by using data to engage in a theoretical analysis of how effective these programs would have to be to justify their cost. The authors find that these programs could have large impacts on low-income students, who are less likely to attend pre-K programs than white or high-income children, as shown in Figure 3.⁶⁰ Consequently, these students are already behind in kindergarten 1998 and 2010, the differences between the math and reading scores of high- and low-income students were a whopping 1.1 to 1.3 standard deviations.⁶¹ However, the authors found that a public ECE program could be effective in reducing this gap and an effect of only 0.035-0.07 standard deviations would be needed to justify the program’s cost, as increased test scores would lead to increased earnings.⁶² Thus, although a publicly-funded pre-K program targeted at children in the lowest three income quintiles would could an additional $9.6 billion, “the spending and expected returns are likely in the very least to break even and to bring increased income and economic opportunity.”⁶³ Such programs have the potential to reduce inequality of economic opportunity between low-income and affluent students.⁶⁴

Collectively, these studies provide solid quantitative evidence to support grassroots organizations’ advocacy for investment in early childhood education programs. These studies could be useful for those organizations that engage in lobbying, as they allow legislators to understand the clear economic and social benefits that these programs provide.

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Peer Reviewed Articles:

Garcia, J., Heckman, J., Leaf, D., & Prados, M. (2016). The Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper, 1-72.

Magnuson, K., & Duncan, G. (2016). Can Early Childhood Interventions Decrease Inequality of Economic Opportunity? The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(2): 123-141.