Quantifying the Life-cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program
This paper quantifies and aggregates the multiple lifetime benefits of an influential high-quality early childhood program with outcomes measured through midlife. Guided by economic theory, we supplement experimental data with non-experimental data to forecast the life-cycle benefits and costs of the program. Our point estimate of the internal rate of return is 13.7% with an associated benefit/cost ratio of 7.3. We account for model estimation and forecasting error and present estimates from extensive sensitivity analyses. This paper is a template for synthesizing experimental and non-experimental data using economic theory to estimate the long-run life-cycle benefits of social programs.
-
-
Copy CitationJorge Luis García, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and María José Prados, "Quantifying the Life-cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program," NBER Working Paper 23479 (2017), https://doi.org/10.3386/w23479.
-
-
More from the NBER
In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship — as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews.
