Investing in Children

Despite tight budgets and the global recession, federal, state and local governments would do well to continue investments in early childhood education. That was the consensus of policymakers, early childhood experts and scholars at a half-day conference Monday at the Sanford School of Public Policy exploring questions related to the economics of investing in children.

"In times of scarcity we must focus our resources where the need is greatest if we're going to have a macro impact -- we don't have time for incremental solutions," said Marguerite Kondracke, president and CEO of America's Promise Alliance and a panelist at the event. A Duke alumna, Kondracke co-founded and served as CEO of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the nation's largest provider of employer-sponsored child care.

Speakers including former North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt Jr., differed in their opinions about how best to focus those resources.

"Progress will require that we tie more persuasively, our early childhood efforts to K-12 education," Hunt said. "We have to show that kids in early childhood programs develop more cognitive skills and measure how they're doing, how their minds are developing, and what causes their minds to develop in those early years."

Hunt also suggested rethinking funding for early childhood programs, giving more control to states over federal programs such as Head Start and getting the private sector more involved.

Ron Haskins of The Brookings Institution advocated devoting more funding and more opportunities for minority children.

"I propose three solutions," he said, "stronger families, more work and more education." He also suggested slowing the increasing rate of spending on the elderly and refocusing that money on children.

New York University professor Lawrence Aber agreed.

"We are facing a national economic crisis in families' and the public sector's ability to invest in children," he said. "We need a generational fix." Aber suggested delaying the retirement age, shifting social security payments and having those who are better-off help those who are worse off.

"We need to achieve a society with developmental equity," he said.

The event, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke, concluded with a presentation by Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman.

"There is a strong economic case for investing in early childhood," Heckman said in a talk about the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in early childhood programs.

"In a time of tight budgets, we need to spend money where it has a higher rate of return, we have to prioritize," he said. "Early interventions have higher economic returns than interventions later in life."