Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She recently edited and contributed to “For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States.“
Even a 4-year-old can understand the case for early-childhood education. It’s fun, you learn things, you make it easier for Mom and Dad to earn a decent living, and when you grow up you will be better able to earn a decent living yourself. At that point, you will start paying taxes that return the favor, helping finance the retirement and health care of the generation that invested in your education.
President Obama’s proposal to help states develop and expand high-quality early-education programs has won verbal support from across the political spectrum, including David Brooks. More tangible evidence of political viability comes from Oklahoma and Georgia, two traditionally red states that now provide universal voluntary preschool for 4-year-olds.
Still, conservative opposition remains fierce. The loudest complaint is that public programs have not been shown to be cost-effective. But a wealth of research by highly respected economists shows that well-designed, high-quality early-childhood education programs offer a positive payback. At National Public Radio you can listen to the University of Chicago economist James Heckman reiterate this point – as he has been doing for many years.
Timothy Bartik of the Upjohn Institute offers great running commentary on debates over technical issues (such as whether small, demonstrably successful programs can be effectively scaled up) at his Investing in Kids blog.
Academics aren’t the only ones on board. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a report last year explaining “Why Business Should Support Early-Childhood Education.”
But the case for a public commitment to early-childhood education extends well beyond any cost-benefit analysis of child outcomes. It would help parents meet their child-care needs and reconcile the conflicting demands of wage employment and family care.
As a report published by the Center for American Progress emphasizes, preschool enrollment rates are already high among 4-year-olds in particular. But high costs mean that participation is highest among the poor, who qualify for Head Start, and the affluent, who can afford to pay out of pocket.
Even parents who currently rely on informal child-care arrangements would benefit from more dependable public provision. Many are just one family member, friend or neighbor away from a child-care crisis that could endanger their jobs. At Forbes, Bryce Covert makes a case for emphasizing the positive employment impact of the proposed policy.
Women’s labor-force participation rates in the United States were once relatively high by international standards. In 1990, we ranked sixth among 22 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By 2010, our rank had fallen to 17th. Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn of Cornell University estimate that about 29 percent of the decrease in women’s labor-force participation relative to other countries is attributable to those countries’ adoption of more “family friendly” public policies than those in the United States.
Improvements in children’s future productivity and greater opportunities for productive employment for everyone will shape the future of the United States economy. Conservatives enjoy their strongest support among older white voters, many of whom have already raised their children.
Both young parents and young children are far more ethnically diverse than the population over age 65.
But as the journalist Ronald Brownstein points out in an article memorably titled “The Gray and the Brown,” the very structure of our social programs makes the generations dependent on one another:
Today’s minority students will represent an increasing share of tomorrow’s workforce and thus pay more of the payroll taxes that will be required to fund Social Security and Medicare benefits for the mostly white Baby Boomers. Many analysts warn that if the U.S. doesn’t improve educational performance among African-American and Hispanic children, who now lag badly behind whites in both high school and college graduation rates, the nation will have difficulty producing enough high-paying jobs to generate the tax revenue to maintain a robust retirement safety net.
These are linkages that voters sorely need to understand. In coming months both Social Security and Medicare are likely to withstand the budgetary pressures imposed by the threat of sequestration. On the other hand, programs directed at children – including support for early-childhood education – are likely to come under the deficit-cutting knife.
In the long run, that knife will cut both ways, bleeding our system of intergenerational transfers.
Which is one more reason why it’s important for President Obama and his supporters to wrestle it out of conservative hands.
Today's Economist: Nancy Folbre: Preschool Economics
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Today's Economist: Nancy Folbre: Preschool Economics
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Today's Economist: Nancy Folbre: Preschool Economics
