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June 28, 2005
Preschool investment pays off in later yearsResearch agency WestEd has recently released a cost-benefit analysis of taxpayer investment in early childhood education concluding that "a nationwide commitment to high-quality early childhood development (ECD) would cost a significant amount of money upfront, but it would have a substantial payoff."
Specifically, investing in preschool for children of poverty would eventually result in: lower public education expenses because these children will fail fewer grades and require less special education; lower criminal justice costs because of lower crime and delinquency rates; higher incomes earned by these children as adults; and thus, lower public welfare expenses.
The authors point out that this kind of investment results in a better return than for the stock market's annual real rate between 1871 and 1998. There, the rate of return was 6.3 percent as compared with the total pre-K investment returns of 16 percent. And unlike stock investments, the returns benefit everyone, not just a few.
The hitch is that society has to be patient. During the first 16 years after the early childhood investments, costs outweigh the budgetary benefits. But, "One of the most important non-government finance-related benefits of ECD investment is its impact on the future earnings of participants. In the long run, these higher future earnings result from higher productivity of as much as a fifth of our future workforce and will translate into higher Gross Domestic Product levels. In other words, a nationwide ECD program that targets all poor children will result in a future workforce that is better educated and more productive." Anyone listening in Congress?
Posted June 28, 2005 12:00 AM | Early Childhood Education
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