Quantifying the Life-cycle Benefits of a Prototypical Early Childhood Program / Jorge Luis García, James J. Heckman, Duncan Ermini Leaf, María José Prados.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

García, Jorge Luis.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Heckman, James J.

Leaf, Duncan Ermini.

Prados, María José.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23479.

NBER working paper series no. w23479

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

This paper quantifies and aggregates the multiple lifetime benefits of an influential high-quality early childhood program with outcomes measured through midlife. Guided by economic theory, we supplement experimental data with non-experimental data to forecast the life-cycle benefits and costs of the program. Our point estimate of the internal rate of return is 13.7% with an associated benefit/cost ratio of 7.3. We account for model estimation and forecasting error and present estimates from extensive sensitivity analyses. This paper is a template for synthesizing experimental and non-experimental data using economic theory to estimate the long-run life-cycle benefits of social programs.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2017.