On June 27, the Joint Economic Committee held a hearing on “Investing in Young Children Pays Dividends: the Economic Case for Early Care and Education.
Vice Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) said, “Estimates show that the return on investing in early care and education is between seven to 18 percent annually. If this were a stock, all of Wall Street would be buying.” Rep. Maloney continued, “Children are our most precious resource and the success of our nation depends on their ability to achieve their full potential. Early care and education fosters higher labor force participation and earnings, increases future productivity and economic growth, and helps maintain our ability to compete in the global economy. Quality child care can help businesses’ bottom lines by improving worker productivity, reducing absenteeism, and lowering turnover. Estimates show that employee absences due to child care breakdowns cost U.S. businesses $3 billion annually.”
Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA), sponsor of the Prepare All Kids Act (S.1374), said, “Why should we invest in high quality early childhood development and education? Well, for one thing, it’s the right thing to do for children and families. But decades of research tell us it also makes sense from just about every other angle. From a purely monetary standpoint, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the economic value of investing in high quality early childhood education. According to one study, we save $17 for every $1 we spend.” Sen. Casey noted that the Prepare All Kids Act would “help states provide high-quality pre-kindergarten programs that will prepare children, and particularly low-income children, for a successful transition to kindergarten and elementary school.”
In detailing the importance of society’s role in early childhood education, James Heckman, Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at the University of Chicago, said, “Early family environments are major predictors of cognitive and socioeconomic abilities, as well as crime, health, and obesity. This observation is a major source of concern because family environments in the U.S. and many other countries around the world have deteriorated over the past 40 years. Experiments support a large body of non-experimental evidence that adverse family environments promote adult failure.” Dr. Heckman continued, “If society intervenes early enough, it can affect cognitive and socioeconomic ability and the health of disadvantaged children. Early interventions promote schooling, reduce crime, promote workforce productivity, and reduce teenage pregnancy. These interventions are estimated to have high benefit-cost ratios and rates of return. Early interventions have much higher returns than other later interventions, such as reduced pupil-teacher ratios, public job training, convict rehabilitation programs, tuition subsidies, or expenditures on police.”
“In the absence of a full federal commitment, the states are taking it upon themselves to invest in early childhood education,” said Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. She continued, “This year, 29 governors proposed increased investments in pre-K and other early learning programs. This is 11 more than the previous year, with the total investment of these proposals exceeding $800 million and providing early learning opportunities to more than 100,000 three- and four-year-olds. These proposals show the building momentum for a national commitment to early education, and I’m proud to say that Kansas is one of the states that increased its commitment to young children this year, just as we’ve done over the past several years.” Gov. Sebelius added, “We started in 1999 by devoting Kansas’ share of the tobacco settlement to children’s programs, specifically early childhood education. Smart Start grants have been given to communities for a wide range of programs focused on the well-being of children from birth to age five, with $8.4 million of these grants expected to be made this year alone.”
Harriet Dichter, deputy secretary of the Office of Child Development and Early Learning in the Pennsylvania Department of Education and Public Welfare, also discussed her state’s efforts to bolster early childhood education: “In Pennsylvania, we do not focus on just one type of early childhood program. We do insist that all of our programs get organized with certain commonalities: high standards, accountability, and sufficient financial and other supports.” Ms. Dichter went on to say, “This targeted, highly-focused investment will have immediate payoffs in our school system and future payoffs in academic and career achievement, which will benefit our children and the broader community.” She added, “The second point is the importance of shared and responsible public investment in these programs. The established and dedicated funding streams in areas such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start are not keeping pace. Pennsylvania is using state resources, for example, to close the gap between those eligible for Head Start and those funded at the federal level. Our broad based educational streams that can be used on a discretionary basis to support some early childhood program such as those under No Child Left Behind [P.L. 107-110] also are not keeping pace.”
Douglas Besharov, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Social and Individual Responsibility Project, said, “An increasing number of low-income mothers have jobs, especially since welfare reform. According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation…in 2002, about 19 percent of poor mothers of four-year-olds worked full-time, and about 16 percent worked part-time. For three-year-olds, the respective figures were both about 17 percent. As a result, enrollments in child care programs have increased substantially, and Head Start no longer enjoys the dominant place in the constellation of federal child care and early childhood education programs.” Mr. Besharov noted that the suggestion of improving Head Start’s services to better close the achievement gap, and expanding its schedule to meet the needs of working mothers “would have the advantage of building on an existing nationwide network of federally funded programs focused on poor children.” However, he added that “besides Head Start’s disappointing impacts on child development, reorienting it to serve the growing number of children whose mothers have jobs would be a major and severely disruptive undertaking. It would also be very expensive. Head Start is already the most expensive form of early intervention. By our estimate, the basic, part-day program costs about $5,608 per child. Expanding Head Start to full-time, full-year would bring costs to about $20,607 per child and that would not address Head Start’s apparent inability to meet the developmental needs of poor children. Moreover, if the past is any guide, the Head Start community would oppose such moves and, instead, press for the program to serve younger children and higher-income children without changing its approach to early childhood educational services.”
