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I’ll be speaking next week, May 9, to the Arizona Directors Symposium, a professional development symposium for directors, managers, and others involved in early childhood education and early childcare. I’ll be speaking about the macroeconomics of early childcare. The slides are posted below here (you can download the file if you click on the little gear icon). I’m very excited about this opportunity for two reasons. First, people who work with kids in early childcare programs are often under-paid and under-funded. It’s a real shame because, macroeconomically, the work they do is about as important as anyone’s. In fact our future long-run GDP growth rate depends more on what they do than what happens in Silicon Valley. The second reason I’m excited is because it’s another chance to get the message out about the importance of intergenerational economics. In the past couple of years, I’ve often presented on the importance to the entire economy of intergenerational transfer programs to seniors such as Social Security and Medicare. (see here, here, here, or here) But now I’ve got a chance to talk about the importance of intergenerational transfers to children, especially very young children. Besides the slides here, I hope to write a couple longer posts in the near future as time permits explaining some of the key points I plan to make.
Early childhood education (ECE) and early childcare is one of the very best, if not the best, investment we can make. Research in recent years, particularly research by economics Nobel Laureate James Heckman at heckmanequation.org combined with research at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child and others have demonstrated the power of ECE. Building off of longitudinal, controlled studies of participants in the pioneering 1960’s Perry Pre-School Program in Ypsilanti, MI, Heckman calculates that the annual return on investment is at least 7-10%. Each dollar that society invests in ECE through government funding of programs returns to society as much as $16 eventually. This is a real return, after adjusted for inflation, and lasts for 40+ years. No other investment opportunity pays off like ECE. Even average stock market returns over 3 and 4 decades fail to achieve this level of return.
The reason ECE is so powerful is because very young children’s brains and minds under go such rapid development in the first few months and years. Not only does this sensory pathway and language development provide the foundation for higher cognitive function, it also provides the basis for “emotional intelligence” (EQ). EQ, or what Heckman calls character, includes the qualities such as persistence, creativity, communication, and social skills that are necessary for success in later education, careers, and life in general. Substantial evidence shows that by providing quality early child education and childcare, society can and does reap a significant increase in GDP. The increase in GDP comes from multiple sources:
- improved health when the children become adults – lowering social healthcare costs
- reduced social costs from reduced corrections, incarceration, and victim damages
- greater participation in the workforce as adults
- greater productivity as adults.
As our economy moves further through the 21st century we need the kind of healthy, high-EQ adults that ECE produces. It’s truly a win-win all the way around. Further, ECE is a classic economic example of why we must have government social funding of ECE. The economic benefits of ECE are so wide-spread that the bulk of the returns are in the form of externalities, which means that depending upon private decisions and private funding of ECE will guarantee under-investment and an inefficient result. In contrast, if society steps up and invests in ECE, instead of making government budget issues worse, we will in fact improve the long-run budget perspective, improve standards of living, and even make future adjustments to Social Security unnecessary. That’s how intergenerational economics should work.
