The Value of Early Child Development

We are all familiar with U.S. studies (particularly the research of HighScope Educational Research Foundation) demonstrating the positive returns to society of investments in early childhood education.  Now the Lancet Child Development project has pulled together the findings of 42 international program assessments on early childhood interventions and reached this conclusion as presented in The Lancet (September 2011):

"A conservative estimate of the returns to investment in early child development is illustrated by the effects of improving one component: preschool attendance.  Achieving enrollment rates of 25% per country in 1 year would result in a benefit of US$ 10.6 billion and achieving a 50% enrollment could have a benefit of more than a $33 billion (in terms of present discounted value of future labour market productivity) with a benefit-to-cost ratio of 17.6.  Incorporating improved nutrition and parenting programmes would result in a larger gain."

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