@article {9136, title = {Quantifying the life-cycle benefits of a prototypical early childhood program}, number = {Working Paper No. 23479}, year = {2017}, month = {06/2017}, institution = {National Bureau of Economic Research}, address = {Cambridge, MA}, 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.}, keywords = {Childhood adversity, Lifecycles}, doi = {10.3386/w23479}, url = {http://www.nber.org/papers/w23479.pdf}, author = {Garcia, Jorge Luis and Heckman, James J. and Leaf, Duncan Ermini and Prados, Mar{\'\i}a Jos{\'e}} }