My second book on early childhood programs is available as of September 15, 2014. This book is entitled From Preschool to Prosperity: The Economic Payoff to Early Childhood Programs. This book is available free as a pdf file, at a nominal price ($0.99) on various e-book platforms, and at a price covering printing costs in hard copy form.

Why a second book on early childhood programs, when my first book, Investing in Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development, was published in 2011?

First, this new book is much shorter than my earlier book. The new book is short enough to be read entirely in less than two hours, which I hope will enlarge the audience for the book.

Second, this book has a more general focus than the previous book. The previous book was more narrowly focused on whether early childhood programs can boost local economies. While this is an important issue, the present book instead focuses more generally on all the economic payoffs to early childhood programs.

From Preschool to Prosperity reviews the key issues about the case for early childhood programs: the rigor of the research evidence, a discussion of the key arguments made by opponents of expanded early childhood programs, a discussion of what research suggests about how early childhood programs should best be designed and financed, and an analysis of what the research evidence suggests for the spillover benefits of early childhood programs for others besides the families participating in the programs.

These broad issues should be of interest to many audiences, including early childhood education advocates, the business community, and policymakers.

I’ll be blogging over the next few weeks about some of the issues discussed in From Preschool to Prosperity.