Strengthening Benefit-Cost Analysis for Early Childhood Interventions Workshop Summary (2009) / Chapter Skim
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4 Assessing Outcomes
4 Assessing Outcomes
Pages 23-36
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From page 23... ...
Ideally, accurate assessments of the potential benefits of early childhood programs would rest on com mon definitions of outcomes and programs and common approaches to measuring both short- and long-term outcomes. But these tools are not yet firmly in place, and researchers have been exploring a range of approaches; presenters explored their strengths and limitations and pointed to promising directions for future research.
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From page 24... ...
Barnett provided a breakdown of the value, in 2002 dollars, of the different beneficial outcomes for each of the programs, as shown in Figures 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3, and called attention to fairly large differences across the three programs. For example, the benefits in crime reduction are very large for the Perry Preschool Project; such benefits are not evident for the Carolina Abecedarian Project.
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From page 25... ...
. for landscape scaled for portrait below Welfare Ed ucatio n Earnings Chil d Ca re Crime Preschool Chil d Ca re = $920 Benefits $8K $65 K $1 73 K $249,663 Welfare = $770 $15,386 Costs $0 $20, 00 0 $ 40,0 00 $6 0, 00 0 $ 80, 00 0 $ 100,000 $120, 000 $1 40 ,0 00 $160,000 $ 180 ,0 00 $2 00 ,0 00 $220, 00 0 $ 240 ,0 00 FIGURE 4-1 Perry Preschool Project: Economic return (in 2002 dollars)
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From page 26... ...
. scaled for portrait below Educat ion Maternal Earnings Participant Earnings Future Generations Health Preschool Benefits $8K $69K $38K $6 K $18K $138 ,598 Costs $43,983 (pre-K & college child care)
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From page 27... ...
They used proxies that seem crude today, such as using special education and grade retention costs to predict educational attainment. However, by the time the original program participants reached ages 19-40, researchers could sufficiently quantify benefits in many areas (e.g., crime reduction, welfare, educational attainment)
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From page 28... ...
But that does not mean that quality is not important. Thus, for Brooks-Gunn, making preschool programs accessible to lowincome children and ensuring their quality are the two primary goals for early childhood policy.
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From page 29... ...
She noted that they also saw sustained effects in mathematics achievement, reduc tion in aggression, and maternal employment -- overall results that are greater than those for the Abecedarian and Perry Preschool projects, for example, although IHDP was only a two-year program. Brooks-Gunn highlighted the key strengths of the study, which included faithful implementation of a tested curriculum, the collection of data on attendance (a key factor in impact)
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From page 30... ...
Their parents showed positive effects, such as increases in reading to their children daily and use of teaching strategies, and decreases in maternal depression. Brooks-Gunn noted examples of useful data collected by the study, including detailed measures of vocabulary development, attention, and the home environment, as well as videotapes of the children interacting with their parents.
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From page 31... ...
Projecting (or Guesstimating) Long-Term Outcomes Without a doubt, the best way to understand the long-term effects of early childhood interventions is to collect real data -- that is, to follow children over time and find out what happens to them using empirical methods, Magnuson observed.
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From page 32... ...
experiment on class size. This approach could be adapted to produce rough estimates for other predictors and outcomes, Magnuson explained, but there are a few complications in applying it to early childhood interventions.
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From page 33... ...
Moreover, the ways in which the benchmark program results in long-run outcomes, and the population for which it was studied, may have unique characteristics that account for its effects. Table 4-4 shows the results Magnuson calculated using each of these methods, including the two-step version using two different intermediary measures -- adolescent achievement skills and high school completion.
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From page 34... ...
By drawing on vital statistics and census data, the researchers were able to establish that counties with Head Start programs had lower childhood mortality rates and higher education levels than did poor counties without the program.
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From page 35... ...
They found that major health problems at ages 0-3 are predictive of both poorer educational attainment and welfare use, primarily because poor health at early ages is predictive of poor health in the later years. They also found that mental health problems were much more predictive of future welfare use and lower educational attainments than physical health problems.
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From page 36... ...
Many participants supported the idea, noting, for example, that "we are not going to be reproducing the Perry Preschool study any time soon, and we don't want to wait around for 40 years [but] we are going to be implementing these programs." Looking at the back-of-the-envelope estimates Magnuson had described as well as Currie's linkage approach, a participant noted that they are "useful -- if you know what the cost is.
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