TY - JOUR AU - Heckman,James J. AU - Moon,Seong Hyeok AU - Pinto,Rodrigo AU - Savelyev,Peter A. AU - Yavitz,Adam TI - The Rate of Return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15471 PY - 2009 Y2 - November 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15471 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15471.pdf N1 - Author contact info: James J. Heckman Department of Economics The University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: 773/702-0634 Fax: 773/702-8490 E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu Seong Moon Department of Economics The University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-Mail: moon@uchicago.edu Rodrigo Pinto Department of Economics The University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-Mail: rodrig@uchicago.edu Peter A. Savelyev Department of Economics Vanderbilt University VU Station B #351819 2301 Vanderbilt Place Nashville, TN 37235-1819 Tel: (615) 322-1529 Fax: (615) 343-8495 E-Mail: peter.savelyev@vanderbilt.edu Adam Yavitz Department of Economics University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-Mail: adamy@uchicago.edu AB - This paper estimates the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. Estimates of the rate of return to the Perry program are widely cited to support the claim of substantial economic benefits from preschool education programs. Previous studies of the rate of return to this program ignore the compromises that occurred in the randomization protocol. They do not report standard errors. The rates of return estimated in this paper account for these factors. We conduct an extensive analysis of sensitivity to alternative plausible assumptions. Estimated social rates of return generally fall between 7-10 percent, with most estimates substantially lower than those previously reported in the literature. However, returns are generally statistically significantly different from zero for both males and females and are above the historical return on equity. Estimated benefit-to-cost ratios support this conclusion. ER -