Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A New Cost-Benefit And Rate Of Return Analysis For The Perry Preschool Program: A Summary, James Heckman, Seong Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev

Peter Savelyev

Childhood Programs and Practices in the First Decade of Life presents research findings on the effects of early childhood programs and practices in the first decade of life and their implications for policy development and reform. Leading scholars in the multidisciplinary field of human development and in early childhood learning discuss the effects and cost-effectiveness of the most influential model, state, and federally funded programs, policies, and practices. These include Head Start, Early Head Start, the WIC nutrition program, Nurse Family Partnership, and Perry Preschool as well as school reform strategies. This volume provides a unique multidisciplinary approach to understanding …

Understanding The Mechanisms Through Which An Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes, James Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev

Peter Savelyev

A growing literature establishes that high quality early childhood interventions targeted toward disadvantaged children have substantial impacts on later life outcomes. Little is known about the mechanisms producing these impacts. This paper uses longitudinal data on cognitive and personality skills from an experimental evaluation of the influential Perry Preschool program to analyze the channels through which the program boosted both male and female participant outcomes. Experimentally induced changes in personality skills explain a sizable portion of adult treatment effects.

Analyzing Social Experiments As Implemented: A Reexamination Of The Evidence From The Highscope Perry Preschool Program, James Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Peter A. Savelyev

Peter Savelyev

Social experiments are powerful sources of information about the effectiveness of interventions. In practice, initial randomization plans are almost always compromised. Multiple hypotheses are frequently tested. “Significant” effects are often reported with p‐values that do not account for preliminary screening from a large candidate pool of possible effects. This paper develops tools for analyzing data from experiments as they are actually implemented.

We apply these tools to analyze the influential HighScope Perry Preschool Program. The Perry program was a social experiment that provided preschool education and home visits to disadvantaged children during their preschool years. It was evaluated by …