Investing in Our Children: What We Know and Don't Know about the Costs and Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions.

This study quantified the benefits to children and parents participating in nine early intervention programs and conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the Perry Preschool and the Elmira Prenatal/Early Infancy Project (PEIP). The findings indicated that early intervention programs led to the following advantages for program participants relative to those in the control groups: (1) gains in child emotional or cognitive development or improved parent-child relationships; (2) improvements in educational process and child outcomes; (3) increased economic self-sufficiency, initially for parents and later for children; (4) reduced criminal activity; and (5) improvements in health-related indicators. Savings to government programs were much higher than the costs for the Perry Preschool; this was also true for the higher-risk families of the PEIP. For lower-risk participants of the PEIP, however, government savings were not enough to offset program costs. (Two appendices detail the benefit cost analysis. Contains 159 references.) (KB)