Investments in Kids Pay Off, Study Finds

In the most comprehensive study to date of programs designed to improve the lives of poor children, the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. has found that investments in the first five years of childhood yield substantial and lasting benefits not only to the children and their families but to their communities.

Reviewing nine small-scale programs, many of them short-lived, Rand, a think tank, found that most of them improved the participating children’s subsequent academic achievement and that several decreased the likelihood that the children would grow up to lead lives of crime. For every dollar spent on the early childhood programs, society later saved several dollars on welfare, special education and criminal justice, it said.

Some participants, Rand found, continued to benefit from the intervention decades after taking part in the programs. Positive effects of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project, operated in Ypsilanti, Mich., from 1962 to 1967, were still evident 27 years later, it said.

The program of preschool and home visits, which targeted African American children with low IQs from low-income families, netted savings of $25,000 per participant by increasing each child’s later earnings (and tax contributions) and reducing the government’s spending on welfare, education and criminal justice, the study found.

Rand measured the positive effects of all the programs by comparing participants with similar children who did not receive the special services.

Another program, which involved 32 visits by specially trained nurses to the homes of low-income single mothers during a child’s first two years, yielded close to $20,000 of savings per child. The Elmira Prenatal/Early Infancy Project ran from 1978 to 1982 in Elmira, N.Y., and has since been reproduced in Memphis, Tenn., and Denver.

At a time when interest in early childhood intervention programs has blossomed across the country, the Rand study suggests that “well-designed, targeted” programs can have a lasting impact on the children they reach and on the communities where they live.

“There are a number of proven models out there” that can be adapted to a community’s circumstances and needs, said Rand economist Lynn A. Karoly, the principal author of the study. “The bottom line is we believe there is much that is hopeful in this area but it is important to proceed with caution.”

Although no California programs were studied, Rand released its study as Jeanne Smart of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services revealed plans within the next six months to launch a program loosely modeled on the Elmira program.

Smart said the program would help the county to identify with and intervene in the lives of children living with parents who are substance abusers and addicts. The program would start in the Antelope Valley and South-Central Los Angeles, she said.

The Rand study suggested that such intervention programs are most likely to yield savings when they target the neediest children. It found that when the Elmira program broadened its target audience to include children from lower-middle income families and children with two parents at home, the cost of delivering the special services outweighed the monetary benefits.

That finding may have particular relevance as Congress debates how to respond to President Clinton’s $21.7-billion child-care initiative. Republicans have argued that the White House proposal goes too far in encouraging lower-income families to use institutional day care and that welfare reform already has boosted child-care programs for low-income Americans. Republicans have proposed an increase in tax breaks for middle-income working families that use day care and for families that choose to forgo a second income so that one parent can stay home and raise children.

Karoly said Rand found that the most successful programs appear to have three things in common: They offered intensive services to children and sometimes to their mothers, often over two or more years; they included a well-developed curriculum that changed with a child’s growing needs and abilities; and they drew on highly trained staffs that were closely supervised and monitored.

Although significant in impact, many of the nine programs Rand reviewed were small in scale and were tried in one community only. The smallest program involved only 44 children in Murfreesboro, Tenn., whereas the largest, which continues to operate in Chicago, has served 1,150 children.

To communities shopping for a model of successful early childhood intervention, the Rand researchers recommended a careful look at the nine programs they assessed. But they cautioned that some programs may not be as effective if they are tried on a much larger scale.

Actor and director Rob Reiner, who heads the “I Am Your Child” Foundation and who urged Rand to conduct the study, applauded its findings. Reiner helped secure funding for the assessment from the California Wellness Foundation.

Times staff writer Sonia Nazario in Los Angeles contributed to this story.