EXAMPLE 6 The effects of day care

Should the government provide day care for low-income preschool children? If day care helps these children stay in school and hold good jobs later in life, the government would save money by paying less welfare and collecting more taxes, so even those who are concerned only about the cost to the government might support day care programs. The Carolina Abecedarian Project (the name suggests learning the ABCs) has followed a group of children since 1972.

The Abecedarian Project is an experiment involving 111 people who in 1972 were healthy but low-income black infants in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. All the infants received nutritional supplements and help from social workers. Approximately half, chosen at random, were also placed in an intensive preschool program. The experiment compares these two treatments. Many response variables were recorded over more than 30 years, including academic test scores, college attendance, and employment.

This long and expensive experiment does show that intensive day care has substantial benefits in later life. The day care in the study was intensive indeed—lots of highly qualified staff, lots of parent participation, and detailed activities starting at a very young age, all costing about $11,000 per year for each child. It’s unlikely that society will decide to offer such care to all low-income children, so the level of care in this experiment is somewhat unrealistic. The unanswered question is a big one: how good must day care be to really help children succeed in life?