The Benefits and Costs of Head Start / Jens Ludwig, Deborah A. Phillips.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ludwig, Jens.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Phillips, Deborah A.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w12973.

NBER working paper series no. w12973

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

In this essay we review what is known about Head Start and argue that the program is likely to generate benefits to participants and society as a whole that are large enough to justify the program's costs. Our conclusions differ importantly from those offered in some previous reviews because we use a more appropriate standard to judge the success of Head Start (namely, benefit-cost analysis), draw on new accumulating evidence for Head Start's long-term effects on early cohorts of program participants, and discuss why common interpretations of a recent randomized experimental evaluation of Head Start's short-term impacts may be overly pessimistic. While in principle there could be more beneficial ways of deploying Head Start resources, the benefits of such changes remain uncertain and there is some downside risk.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2007.