Early Education and Adult Health: Age 37 Impacts and Economic Benefits of the Child-Parent Center Preschool Program

Abstract

This article evaluates the long-term impacts of the Chicago Child-Parent Centers (CPC), a comprehensive early childhood program launched in the 1960s, on physical and mental health outcomes. This study follows a cohort of 1539 participants born in 1979–1980 and surveyed most recently at age 35–37 by employing a matched study design that included all 989 children who entered CPCs at ages 3 and 4 (1983-1985) and 550 comparison children of the same age from randomly selected schools participating in the usual district early childhood programs in kindergarten. Using propensity score weighting that addresses potential issues with differential attrition and non-random treatment assignment, results reveal that CPC preschool participation is associated with significantly lower rates of adverse health outcomes such as smoking and diabetes. Further, evaluating the economic impacts of the preschool component of the program, the study finds a benefit-cost ratio in the range of 1.35–3.66 (net benefit: $3896) indicating that the health benefits of the program by themselves offset the costs of the program even without considering additional benefits arising from increased educational attainment and reduced involvement in crime reported in earlier cost-benefit analyses. The findings are robust to corrections for multiple hypothesis testing, sensitivity analysis using a range of discount rates, and Monte Carlo analysis to account for uncertainty in outcomes.

Cost‐benefit analyses of developmental crime prevention programmes

“…Focusing solely on the preschool component of CPC, Varshney et al. (2022) found that it produced savings between $1.35 and $3.66 at age 37. It is worth noting that these estimates were based only on health outcomes (i.e., diabetes, smoking and obesity), so it is possible that the programme may produce additional savings in other domains.…”

Early childhood inequalities

“…When followed up at several points in their lives, participants were found to have significantly better outcomes than a group of similar individuals who had been randomised out of the programme: as adults, they had higher educational qualifications and earnings, improved health and health-related behaviours, and lower criminal activity, and these benefits have been found to last until age 54 (García, Heckman and Ronda, 2021). Similarly, long-term benefits were found for a number of other early childhood interventions targeted at very disadvantaged children, including the Jamaican Home Visit Program (Gertler et al, 2014), the Abecedarian Project (Campbell et al, 2012) and the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program (Ou, Yoo and Reynolds, 2021;Varshney, Temple and Reynolds, 2022).…”

A Benefit–Cost Analysis of Tulsa Pre-K, Based on Effects on High-School Graduation and College Attendance

“…For example, some studies of pre-K programs find health benefits that by themselves exceed pre-K costs(Varshney et al, 2022).…”