Podcast at Early Ed Watch

Posted on March 22, 2011 by timbartik

A podcast interview with me is now up at the blog Early Ed Watch. I was interviewed by Lisa Guernsey, who directs the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative, and edits the blog Early Ed Watch. Early Ed Watch is an invaluable guide to legislative developments, policy debates, and research on early education issues.  I appreciate the opportunity to reach the readership/listenership of Early Ed Watch.

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Good preschool teaching: what is it?

Posted on March 21, 2011 by timbartik

Several readers have asked me to comment on a recent article in Slate magazine by Alison Gopnik. The article was titled “Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School”. The subtitle was “New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire”.

Based on these titles and subtitles, I think that many readers might expect that the article would provide good reasons to be opposed to preschool. The article has been reported on and interpreted that way in various news outlets. For example, in my hometown newspaper, the Kalamazoo Gazette, their summary of the Slate article is titled “Preschool lessons may “backfire”, studies suggest”.

There have already been excellent responses to the “spin” that headline writers and others are apparently giving to Gopnik’s article. At her Education Week blog, Sara Mead provides an excellent and quite detailed analysis. Lisa Guernsey at Early Ed Watch also provides some excellent comments. So I can be brief, as readers can refer to these more detailed analyses.

The basic point is that Gopnik’s article does not show that preschool can’t be effective, or that preschool teaching isn’t needed. What it shows is that bad preschool teaching makes preschool far less effective than good preschool teaching.

Bad preschool teaching is overly immediately directive. Such bad teaching immediately directly instructs children about toys or objects that can be manipulated, short-circuiting the creativity and explorations of children. Good teaching may provide some hints, and respond to children and ask them questions. But good teaching allows plenty of room for children to learn from their own explorations, while helping them more indirectly along the way.

I think it is interesting that some people respond to Gopnik’s findings in the ways that they do. These responses may reflect some anxieties people have about a society that seems to become ever more pressured and intense, for both children and adults. However, Gopnik’s findings say nothing about whether preschool can be effective. They just provide some guidance as to how to improve preschool teaching. Any broader interpretations express social anxieties more than research findings on preschool.

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New evidence for large state and local returns from investments in preschool and child care: Duke University study of North Carolina’s programs

Posted on March 18, 2011 by timbartik

New findings (released March 16) provide important new information on the “medium-run” test score effects of investments in preschool and child care. These new findings are from an ongoing study by Kenneth Dodge, Helen Ladd, and Clara Muschkin at Duke University. The study examines the effects on 3rd grade test scores of North Carolina’s investments in the “Smart Start” program and the “More at Four” program.

“Smart Start” is a state of North Carolina “birth to five” program, begun in pilot counties in 1993. The program provides a wide range of services, including child care, family support, and health care services.  Services are provided to children from birth to age five. Services can be provided to children at all income levels. The specific services provided are determined with a great deal of flexibility at the county level. In participating counties, Smart Start spending per child has averaged about $250 per child per year, or $1250 over the five years. These average spending levels per child are calculated using all children in the county, not just those participating in Smart Start services.

“More at Four” is a state-funded preschool program for four-year olds, begun in pilot counties in 2001. Eligibility is limited to “at risk” four-year-olds. “At risk” is determined based on family income and other factors. The state funding goes to a wide variety of preschool providers, including private preschools as well as public schools.  The average funding per four-year-old in participating counties is about $1250. This average spending level is also calculated using all four-year-olds in the county, not just four-year-olds participating in the program.

To give another perspective on the size of these North Carolina initiatives, we can calculate what an equivalent effort would cost if implemented nationally. The combined cost of Smart Start and More at Four is about $2,500 per young child per year. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are about 4.3 million four-year-olds in the U.S., with about the same number for each single year of age from birth to age 4. We can multiply $2,500 by 4.3 million to calculate what these two North Carolina programs would cost if implemented at the same scale nationally. The estimate is that a national implementation at the North Carolina level of effort would cost about $11 billion.  Given that there are about 311 million people living in the U.S., the estimated cost of such a program package would be about $35 per person. This can be used with your state or local area population to estimate what such a program package might cost in your state or local area.

The Duke University study is worth paying attention to because its methodology is excellent. These two North Carolina programs happened to be implemented in a phased way across North Carolina counties. Only a few counties participated in these programs when the programs were first started, and then the number of counties participating grew over time.  The Duke University researchers have information on the 3rd grade test scores of individual children in different North Carolina counties in different years.  They estimate how these test scores vary with the county’s spending per child on Smart Start and More at Four, with that spending measured as of the years when the child might have participated in these programs.  They restrict this 3rd grade test score analysis to children born in the county, so that the test-takers could have potentially been a participant in the county’s implementation of Smart Start or More at Four. The research controls for school characteristics and characteristics of the child at birth. Finally, the research controls for any fixed effects or time trends in county test scores, as well as for any overall changes in North Carolina test scores over time.

Why is this methodology believable? Essentially, the research is asking the following question: do county test scores tend to jump after the county begins participating in Smart Start or More at Four? And the study seeks to observe whether that jump occurs when we would expect the jump to occur, given the age ranges covered by the program and the typical age of 3rd graders.  The implicit comparison group is other time periods and counties for which participation in these programs did not change. Because the study statistically controls for any average differences across counties in the levels or trends of test scores, these comparisons across counties and over time are likely to give a good estimate of the effects of these early childhood investments.  This is a good “natural experiment”. It is hard to think of a good reason, other than program effects,   why we would see well-timed jumps in many counties’ test scores. Such jumps are unlikely, without program effects, to just happen to occur in the appropriate years after a particular county’s involvement in these programs increased.

As the researchers point out, another good thing about this methodology is that it captures possible community-wide effects of early childhood programs.  For example, there are good theoretical and empirical reasons to think that educational achievement may depend on peer effects.  The educational achievement gains of one individual student in a class may be positively affected by the average achievement levels of his or her classmates. The Duke University study can capture such peer effects, because the study is looking at the test scores of all 3rd graders born in each county, not just those participating in the program.

The Duke research finds that each of these programs is associated with an increase in test scores that is equivalent to about 2 months of extra achievement. Therefore, the total extra achievement associated with both programs together is 4 months. This extra achievement is averaged over all 3rd graders born in the county. Even with peer effects and other spillovers, obviously we would expect the test score effects for program participants to be greater than 4 months.

What is this extra achievement worth? In chapter 12 of my book Investing in Kids, I address the issue of how much an improvement in early elementary test scores is worth to a state economy, in higher earnings per capita of state residents. Based on that research, I calculate that increasing 3rd grade achievement by 4 months for one student will increase the present value of state per capita earnings by $23,643. (For policy wonks:  This is based on converting the test score gains of 4 months into an “effect size” of 0.28, based on figures in Hill, Bloom, Black and Lipsey.  I then use the numbers for effects of early elementary test scores in chapter 12 of my book.)

The ratio of state economic development benefits to state program costs for North Carolina’s programs is then calculated to be 8.79. I calculate 8.79 by taking earnings gains for state residents of $23,643 per 3rd grade student divided by state spending of $2,500 per child on the two programs, and then adjusting downward by 7.1% to allow for likely migration out-of-state between age 2 and 3rd grade. This downward adjustment for migration between age 2 and 3rd grade is based on estimates reported in chapter 2 of Investing in Kids and in my previous working paper.

This benefit-cost ratio of 8.79 is quite high. What might explain such a high benefit-cost ratio? First, I suspect that the North Carolina program leverages considerable other local resources. The benefit to cost ratio including such local resources would be somewhat lower, although probably still quite high. Second, the planning and coordination of the Smart Start program may lead to improvements in the quality of the local early childhood system. Such qualitative improvements may have very high benefit-cost ratios. Third, the More at Four preschool program is targeted at at-risk students. Such targeted preschool programs are likely to have high benefit to cost ratios. However, as I have pointed out before, expanding targeted programs to universal programs probably offers both economic and political benefits.

The preliminary findings from the Duke study provide further evidence that state-funded early childhood programs can work at a large scale. These programs can lead to changes in elementary school test scores for an entire county that are large enough to be statistically detectable. These improvements in test scores are large enough to be economically important.

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Early childhood programs as one component of the solution for long-run, broad-based economic prosperity

Posted on March 17, 2011 by timbartik

At a recent presentation I made on early childhood programs, one person asked the following question: “How do we restore the American middle class?” Although some might perceive this question as “off-topic”, I do not. We need to be thinking about an overall strategy for greater economic prosperity that will include all of us. Early childhood programs should be part of that strategy. But early childhood programs are not the complete strategy. Even for advocates who are focused on early childhood programs, it is helpful to keep in mind an overall economic strategy.  The overall strategy affects which packages of early childhood programs with other policies make the most sense.

In my view, the overall strategy for a broad-based prosperity includes two types of policies:

(1)    Policies that cost-effectively lower the short-term costs of new business investments.

(2)    Policies that cost-effectively provide the most important inputs for greater economic productivity.

Policies of type 1 include some of the more effective business incentives. As I have outlined in previous posts, such effective business incentives include customized job training and manufacturing extension services (see also my Hamilton Project paper on this topic). But some business tax incentives can also be effective. Pursuing policies of type 1 also implies that we will keep business tax rates on new investment at a reasonable level.  Early childhood programs can also lower the short-term costs of business investment in a state by attracting parents (see my previous posts on effects on property values, and support in the business community for early childhood programs as a way to attract parents).

Policies of type 2 include early childhood programs. Early childhood programs increase the long-run quality of the local labor force, which boosts business productivity. And early childhood programs do so in a cost-effective manner. But other policies also boost the quality of the local labor force. Reforms to K-12 education can also work. These include reforms that will increase learning time, increase teacher quality, and focus high schools more on valuable workplace skills. Job training for adults can also work if it is tied to employers’ skill needs. In addition, economic productivity may also be raised in a cost-effective manner by selective investments in infrastructure, such as transportation infrastructure.

“Cost-effectiveness” is an important descriptor of the policies I recommend. Why? Because we cannot as a nation afford to pursue all policies that might make some claim of lowering business investment costs or providing inputs to greater economic productivity.  I might have added “research-proven” as an additional criterion.

I have previously outlined this approach in a working paper, “What Should Michigan Be Doing to Promote Long-Run Economic Development?”. Despite its title, the eight ideas outlined in this paper would be applicable to any state’s economic development strategy. One of these eight ideas is for an expansion of early childhood programs. But the other seven ideas address some of the other needed components of a comprehensive economic development strategy.

I owe a debt to economic historian Peter Lindert for this way of thinking about economic strategies. In his book, Growing Public, Professor Lindert examines how Western European countries have been able to sustain economic growth despite large social spending. His answer is twofold: (1) Despite a large public sector, these countries have kept tax burdens on business investment reasonable; (2) Much of these countries’ social spending is productive, for example spending on education.

We need to have a balanced view of how public policy can best promote economic prosperity. Economic prosperity is not solely achieved through policies that obviously lower short-run business costs, such as lower business tax rates. On the other hand, business costs are of some importance. A comprehensive economic development strategy will include well-designed investments in a higher-quality labor force. Early childhood programs should take a leading role because of the strength of the evidence for their large effects on labor force quality per dollar spent.

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Why should someone support investing in “other people’s children”?

Posted on March 16, 2011 by timbartik

I previously commented in a blog post on a quotation from conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza. He expressed a frequent popular objection to early childhood programs: why should the average taxpayer want to invest in early childhood programs that might help “other people’s children”? If my child is doing alright, or I don’t have any children, what stake do I have in whether the children of other parents gain the benefits of early childhood programs?

We can reply by pointing to possible cost offsets from early childhood programs. High-quality early childhood programs will reduce special education costs. Early childhood programs will reduce crime, and thereby reduce prison and law enforcement costs.  Early childhood programs may reduce welfare costs and increase tax revenues because former participants will be better off economically as adults.  All of these cost changes provide fiscal benefits for government. These fiscal benefits will enable governments to provide some combination of improved public services and lower tax rates. The average taxpayer will benefit.

But these fiscal benefits don’t get to the heart of the issue. After all, if a lower tax rate is our main goal, we can achieve that by drastic cuts in all government programs.

The heart of the issue is how the economy works. In the long-run, we are all in this economy together. (A phrase loosely inspired by a book by Jared Bernstein.) Enhancing the skills of “other people’s children” will increase the economic prosperity of everyone. This increase in prosperity will include economic benefits for non-participants in early childhood programs.

Production in the economy is typically a team activity. My productivity will be increased if my fellow workers in that same business have higher skills. For example, a business may be better able to introduce more advanced technology or use more sophisticated approaches to production and sales if all workers in the business have higher skills.

Within a local economy, the productivity of one business may be increased by having more skills and productivity in other businesses. Businesses steal ideas and people from other businesses to boost their productivity. Businesses share suppliers, and the productivity of my business will depend on the productivity of my suppliers and whether my suppliers have sufficient other customers to stay in businesses.  This is not any special new idea of mine. These spillover effects within local economies are conventional wisdom within urban and regional economics, and are described by the jargon of “agglomeration economies”. These spillover effects help explain why great cities are able to thrive even with high costs for land and labor. (For a recent book exploring agglomeration economies, see Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City).

Early childhood programs are not the only way to raise the skills of a local economy. But early childhood programs increase skills by a relatively large amount per dollar of public expenditure. In doing so, early childhood programs benefit everyone, not just “other people’s children”.

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What data are most needed to support meaningful evaluation of pre-k programs?

Posted on March 15, 2011 by timbartik

Sara Mead links to the recent report from the Early Childhood Data Collaborative. This report provides an overview of states’ progress towards better data systems for early childhood programs.

Such data systems have multiple uses. Economists tend to be bottom-line oriented, and think only of evaluation of program effects. But data systems are also useful for helping operate the programs well on a regular basis, and meeting the individual child’s needs. Data systems are also useful for describing the program’s characteristics and the characteristics of program participants, which policy-makers want to know. The detailed work done by the Early Childhood Data Collaborative will improve the ability of the early childhood data system to meet these multiple purposes of data collection in early childhood programs.

However, evaluating program effectiveness is a major purpose of early childhood data systems. We want to know whether a particular program works. We want to see whether a program works better for some children rather than others. And we want to see whether there is any relationship between whether a program works and the program’s characteristics.

From the point of view of evaluating pre-k programs, these recent reports should be supplemented with a quite specific and narrow data need. Specifically, if we want to evaluate the effects of the pre-k programs for 4 year olds run by many states, the main data need is the following: we need to collect data at entrance to the state pre-k program, and at entrance to kindergarten for former participants in the state pre-k program, using the same tests for both groups.  This specific need is not mentioned in the two recent reports (August 2010 and March 2011) by the Early Childhood Data Collaborative.

This extra data collection would allow state pre-k programs to be evaluated using a regression discontinuity design. Under this design, in states with a reasonably strict adherence to an age cut-off for pre-k attendance, we can compare the test scores of children who just made the age cut-off the previous year, and therefore participated in a year of state pre-k, with quite similar children who just missed the age cut-off the previous year, and are just entering the state pre-k program this year. We can identify the effects of a state pre-k program on children’s test scores by finding an abrupt jump or discontinuity in children’s test scores at the age cut-off, which breaks a smooth pattern of children having higher test scores with age.

As pointed out in the recent report by the National Institute for Early Education Research, regression discontinuity evaluation is a reliable and rigorous approach to program evaluation. Some of the best research on state pre-k programs has used this approach, including studies by William Gormley and his colleagues of Oklahoma, and studies by the National Institute for Early Education Research of multiple states. Although some states have sometimes collected such data, more systematic evaluation would be possible if such data were collected for all or at least most children in a state.

This test score data could include both “hard skills” and “soft skills”. It should include whatever we think of as the most important outcomes of pre-k participation.

This specific data need deserves to be emphasized because it no doubt seems like a strange data request that is somewhat inconvenient to implement. It is a strange data request because ordinarily we would not give the same test to children entering pre-k that we give to children entering kindergarten.  It is an inconvenient data request because ideally we would want to collect these data as soon as possible after the school year begins. (If the data are collected after a month of school, we are really evaluating the effects of the last 8 months of pre-k plus the first month of kindergarten.)  It would be easier to collect the data at the end of pre-k for all participants, but then the data would not be collected at the same time of the school year, which is important for this analysis.

However, this data request, although strange and inconvenient, allows for rigorous evaluation of the effects of state pre-k programs on kindergarten readiness. If these data are combined with individual data on student characteristics, we can tell how the effects of the state pre-k program vary across different student characteristics. If these data are combined with information on program characteristics (e.g., curriculum used, class size, teacher qualifications, teacher salaries), then with data from all sites in the state, we can determine what program characteristics promote greater pre-k program success.

Comprehensive data systems can provide many benefits. However, we can greatly improve evaluation of state pre-k programs with this narrower request: comparable data at pre-k entrance and kindergarten entrance on how children perform on meaningful tests.

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Early childhood programs can work on a large-scale, without inordinate expense, and without other educational reforms

Posted on March 14, 2011 by timbartik

Linda Perlstein, a well-known education writer, provides a useful review of two recent books on educational improvements: David Kirp’s Kids First, and Wendy Kopp’s A Chance to Make History. The review focuses on the political tension between proposals to improve human capital development in American either by: (1) reforming K-12 education, or (2) changing services outside of K-12 education. Ms. Perlstein comes down on the side of combining both approaches. This position seems to me to be reasonable.

However, in the course of making her case, Ms. Perlstein makes a few statements that, in my opinion, go a bit overboard. These include the following:

“None of the [preschool and other programs praised by Kirp] have been attempted outside of small contained environments. Just as important, we don’t understand exactly why they are effective….[For example,] Perry is…the most heralded early –childhood program ever. But we don’t know which of its many elements – teacher quality, curriculum, leadership, home visits – contributed to its success.”

“Kirp points out that only a few Perry children “were lifted into the middle class.” Whether the effects of a good preschool endure depends on the education that follows…”

“…[B]outique, experimental programs inevitably sacrifice quality when brought to scale. And the quality [Kirp] rightly pushes for costs dearly…Educare, an enriching and intimate experience that lasts from infancy through preschool, does much better for children than Head Start, but for two and a half times more money per year.”

These arguments are exaggerated. First, preschool and other early childhood programs have been proven to work on a large-scale. Examples would include the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program, and statewide programs in Oklahoma, New Jersey, Michigan, South Carolina, West Virginia, and New Mexico.

Second, although the adult success of a child is affected by both early childhood programs and K-12 programs, early childhood programs can be effective even without improvements in K-12. The early childhood component of the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program was successful even without a complete transformation of the K-12 operations of Chicago Public Schools.

Third, although we don’t have a precise recipe for early childhood program success, we know some elements of what makes for program success. (See chapter 5 of my book Investing in Kids for the evidence on this topic.) For example, in preschool, smaller class sizes promote early childhood program success. Teachers, classroom environments, and curricula that allow for more interactions between lead teachers and small groups of students are more successful, particularly when these interactions encourage children to develop thinking skills. In the Nurse Family Partnership program, we know that the program works better when implemented by nurse home-visitors than by paraprofessionals.

Fourth, some successful early childhood programs have been successful even though the annual cost per child is more modest. For example, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research has estimated that a high-quality half-day school-year preschool program can be achieved for an annual cost of about $4,500. (This is from IWPR’s publication Meaningful Investments in Pre-K: Estimating the Per-Child Costs of Quality Programs. The per-child cost is for a class-size of 17 students to 2 teachers, and teachers being paid similar compensation to public school teachers.) This cost is about half the annual cost of Head Start (Ludwig and Phillips, 2007).

On the whole, the evidence suggests that high-quality early childhood programs, and K-12 reform, can both improve adult outcomes. If reasonably well-designed, early childhood programs can be run at a large-scale with reliably high rates of return per dollar spent. K-12 reform is more difficult to implement, but can also have high rates of return for some investments. It is reasonable to suspect that simultaneously implementing both expanded high-quality early childhood programs, and well-designed K-12 reform, would have some synergistic benefits, although hard evidence of such synergy is lacking.

We should not have to choose between pursuing expanded early childhood programs or K-12 reform. Both are worth doing. But we should not assume that we need to simultaneously do everything in the most expensive way to have success. The human capital that undergirds a successful state economy can be improved through more modest and incremental reforms.

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The economic development benefits of improving early childhood teacher preparation

Posted on March 11, 2011 by timbartik

Laura Bornfreund of the New America Foundation has a useful recent report on improving teacher licensing and preparation for pre-k and early elementary grades.

Some highlights of this report include:

*** Too many teacher education programs set too low a bar for entry into the programs, which reduces average quality of the pool of teachers.

*** Teaching preparation programs need to include more practical classroom experience from early stages of the programs, as teaching skills are best learned and evaluated with considerable hands-on experience.

*** Pre-k teachers need to be paid compensation packages that are competitive with public school compensation packages for elementary school teachers, in order to attract and retain quality pre-k teachers.

*** Licensing and certification systems for teachers should provide specialized credentials for early childhood teachers from pre-k until 3rd grade. Licensing systems for teachers that include broad k-5 and k-6 certification often end up giving short shrift to the specialized challenges to early childhood education.

These are only the highlights from my perspective. The entire report is worth reading.

There are potentially enormous gains to even modest increases in average teacher quality in pre-k.  For example, based on my findings in chapters 5 and 12 of Investing in Kids, I calculate the “economic development benefits” of improving the average test score effects at the end of pre-k by 10%. These “economic development benefits” are increased average per capita earnings of state residents. If we enable a beginning teacher to consistently achieve such higher effects, these effects occur for all that teacher’s students over their career.  The present value of such effects is enormous. I calculate the present value of making that improvement over a teacher’s entire career at $548,000.

These dollar effects are so high for two reasons. First, test score effects at the end of pre-k are significant predictors of what happens to adult earnings. Second, a teacher’s entire career includes many students.

Such an enormous effect of higher pre-k teacher quality suggests that it pays off to invest in improving teacher quality. States looking to improve early childhood education should include a strategy for improving teacher preparation and teacher quality.

(Note to policy wonks: I assume pre-k has an average effect size of 0.50, so improving pre-k by 10% improves test scores by an effect size of 0.05. I assume that elementary test score effects are 38% of effects at the end of pre-k. I use the chapter 12 results for the present value of the earnings effects for test score improvements for one elementary student. I assume a pre-k class size of 15. I assume the pre-k teacher’s career length is 40 years. I discount all earnings effects using a real discount rate of 3% annually.)

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Philosophical objections to early childhood programs, part 3: what’s the market failure?

Posted on March 10, 2011 by timbartik

The natural question that any trained economist asks about government support for early childhood programs is: what’s the “market failure”? Economics holds that as a general rule, competitive private markets on their own will promote economic efficiency.  Unless “markets fail” for some reason, economic efficiency will be promoted by private markets without a need for government intervention.

In the case of early childhood programs, parents are free on their own to make decisions about paying for early childhood programs for their child. Why would the government need to intervene in the market for early childhood programs? What is the rationale for the government seeking to increase the quality and quantity of early childhood program services that are purchased?

Several important market failures may provide strong rationales for government interventions in the market for early childhood programs. First, there are some market failures that may lead parents on their own to undervalue their child’s benefits from early childhood education. Parents may lack information on the value of quality early childhood programs. Parents may also lack information on the quality of early childhood programs. In some cases, parents may undervalue early childhood programs compared to the value that would be placed on these programs by the adult the child will become.

Second, parents may be unable to afford high-quality early childhood programs. In theory, if private financial markets were perfect, low-income and working-class parents could borrow to pay for early childhood program costs, and postpone the payback until the child is an adult and is realizing the earnings gains from these programs.  But private financial markets do not exist for such long-term borrowing for lower income and working class groups.

Third, a child’s involvement in high-quality early childhood programs has strong spillover benefits for the community. One spillover benefit of early childhood programs is the resulting reduction in crime. The costs of crime go well beyond the monetary costs of crime for crime victims and the criminal justice system. The most important costs of crime are the psychological damages of trauma and fear that crime causes for crime victims or potential crime victims.

In addition, early childhood programs have spillover benefits by providing fiscal benefits for taxpayers. I have already mentioned the financial savings of reducing crime. Reducing the number of required prison beds, and the need for police and courts and probation officers, can lead to large cost savings. Other fiscal benefits include reduced welfare system costs and Medicaid costs. In addition, the increased earnings from former participants in early childhood programs will be taxed. These extra tax revenues, along with reduced costs for crime and the welfare system, allow governments to provide some combination of better public services and lower tax rates.

The final spillover benefit – and the one I think is the most important spillover benefit – is the effect of early childhood programs on the overall productivity of the local and national economy.  We know that the productivity of any individual worker does not only depend on his or her own skills, but also the skills of his or her co-workers. A business’s production is a team activity. More broadly, the productivity of a particular business in a local economy may not only depend upon that business’s workers and capital, but also on the productivity of nearby businesses. Businesses borrow ideas and workers from one another. Businesses share suppliers. Competition among nearby businesses serves as a spur to innovation and improvement.  For all these reasons, an individual’s actions to become more skilled, through early childhood programs and other means, boosts the economic productivity of the overall local and national economy, not just the individual’s own productivity.

I think this economic productivity spillover argument is the most powerful economic argument for early childhood programs, and indeed for other educational investments. Information problems can be dealt with by better informing parents. Borrowing problems can be dealt with by setting up better loan programs. If governments are fiscally pressed by welfare system costs, some would simply argue for eliminating the welfare programs. Not everyone will perceive the generation of tax revenues for government as a benefit. And although crime prevention has an appeal, getting tough on crime often has a more visceral appeal.

But the economic productivity of the local and national economy is something that everyone has a stake in. My economic fortunes do not depend solely on my own choices and life events. My fortunes also depend on the skills and ideas of others. An investment in early childhood programs recognizes that we’re all in this economy together.

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Philosophical objections to early childhood programs, part 2: are early childhood programs unfair to the more competitive parents?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by timbartik

I am considering various philosophical objections to early childhood programs. This topic is explored in chapter 11 of Investing in Kids. Yesterday, I considered the issue of excessive governmental control over parental choice. Today, I consider whether early childhood programs are unfair to parents who are already successfully using all their resources to help their children succeed in life.

Consider the philosophical argument made by well-known conservative author Dinesh D’Souza:

“I have a five-year-old daughter. Since she was born—actually, since she was conceived—my wife and I have gone to great lengths in the Great Yuppie Parenting Race … Why are we doing these things? We are, of course, trying to develop her abilities so that she can get the most out of life. The practical effect of our actions, however, is that we are working to give our daughter an edge—that is, a better chance to succeed than everybody else’s children … “

“Now, to enforce equal opportunity, the government could do one of two things: it could try to pull my daughter down, or it could work to raise other people’s children up. The first is clearly destructive and immoral, but the second is also unfair. The government is obliged to treat all citizens equally. Why should it work to undo the benefits that my wife and I have labored so hard to provide? Why should it offer more to children whose parents have not taken the trouble?”

I think Mr. D’Souza more bluntly expresses what is behind some people’s objections to government support for early childhood programs.

What response can be made to this objection?  First, one might ask about what is fair from the perspective of the child. Is it fair that some children may be handicapped from the start of life? These handicaps may be not simply due to “parents…not [taking] the trouble”. The parents may be dead, or may face such severe poverty problems that it is difficult to fully meet their children’s needs.

Second, helping children from disadvantaged families need not impose costs on the Yuppie parents. Mr. D’Souza seems to be implicitly using a model in which the number of good jobs in America is fixed.  But this is untrue.

If the quantity and quality of the American labor supply improves, more and better jobs will be created. Mr. D’Souza should have more faith in the ability of the private economy to respond to expanded labor supply. The empirical evidence supports this belief that employers will respond to an improvement in labor supply. As a result, if the children of the disadvantaged are provided with better supports during early childhood, the entire economy will expand, and Mr. D’Souza and other Yuppie parents will not lose out.

In fact, the Yuppie parents and their children may gain from help for the children of the disadvantaged.  High-quality early childhood programs can reduce crime and welfare costs, and increase tax revenue, thus providing both fiscal benefits and quality-of-life benefits for the upper class.

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