The latest evidence in favour of the benefits of early childhood education programs come from Jorge Luis Garcia, James Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and Maria Jose Prados. In a new paper that combines experimental and non-experimental data from the US in a very large cohort of ages from zero to mid-thirties, they estimate the life-cycle benefits of early childhood education programs using an approach that goes beyond current narrowly focused analyses,
Our estimates of the internal rate of return (benefit/cost ratio) range from 8.0% to 18.3% (1.52 to 17.40)... Our baseline estimate of the internal rate of return (benefit/cost ratio) is 13.7% (7.3).
The graphic below shows the net present value of the life-cycle cost-benefit gains over control, in terms of increases in own labour income (from 21 to retirement), incomes of parents, gains from reduced crimes, improvements in QALYs, and so on.
1 comment:
Andrew Gelman's been generally unfavorable towards Heckman milking that one dataset for a while now: http://andrewgelman.com/2017/07/20/nobel-prize-winning-economist-become-victim-bog-standard-selection-bias/
Not that Gelman disagrees with the premise that ECE is very useful
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