Title | Quantifying the life-cycle benefits of a prototypical early childhood program |
Publication Type | Report |
Year of Publication | 2017 |
Authors | Garcia, JLuis, Heckman, JJ, Leaf, DErmini, Prados, MJosé |
Series Title | NBER Working Paper Series |
Document Number | Working Paper No. 23479 |
Date Published | 06/2017 |
Institution | National Bureau of Economic Research |
City | Cambridge, MA |
Keywords | Childhood adversity, Lifecycles |
Abstract | This paper quantifies the experimentally evaluated life-cycle benefits of a widely implemented early childhood program targeting disadvantaged families. We join experimental data with non-experimental data using economic models to forecast its life-cycle benefits. Our baseline estimate of the internal rate of return (benefit/cost ratio) is 13.7% (7.3). We conduct extensive sensitivity analyses to account for model estimation error, forecasting error, and judgments made about the empirical magnitudes of non-market benefits. We examine the performance of widely used, ad hoc estimates of long-term benefit/cost ratios based on short-term measures of childhood test scores and find them wanting. |
URL | http://www.nber.org/papers/w23479.pdf |
DOI | 10.3386/w23479 |
Citation Key | 9136 |