The Long-Term Effects of Early Education Intervention

Currie Head Start是美国最受欢迎和最广为人知的早期干预项目之一。政策制定者和公众似乎都相信“领先计划”的好处是众所周知和有据可查的。然而，仔细阅读文献就会发现，支持“先发计划”持久效果的证据是有限的。调查人员先前的研究表明，“先发计划”对白人儿童的考试成绩和学业成就有显著影响，而且这种影响会持续到青春期。但在黑人儿童中，没有证据表明直接收益对人力资本结果有任何持久影响。然而，他们的研究是基于一个非常小的样本，几乎没有统计学意义上的差异。该项目将利用来自全国青少年纵向调查（NLSY）、全国纵向调查的儿童-母亲档案（NLSCM）和动力学小组研究（PSID）的数据，通过检查益处的形式和益处的持久性，进一步证明谁从“领先开始”中受益。NLSY和NLSCM提供了一系列关于儿童人力资本结果的广泛信息，包括认知测试分数和教育程度。这些数据中的儿童相对较小，因此不可能全面检查“启智计划”的长期影响。这个缺口将通过利用PSID的一个特殊模块来填补，该模块部分地由这个项目的主要研究人员设计。该模块包含丰富的教育历史，将结合超过25年的纵向数据的劳动力市场结果的受访者和他们的父母。更具体地说，这个项目试图回答之前关于“启智计划”的研究提出的三个问题。首先，早期干预项目是否可行，还是像一些人声称的那样，孩子的结局真的很大程度上是由母亲的禀赋决定的？第二，认知测试分数是衡量早期干预项目效果的有意义的标准吗？当以更具体的结果来判断时，种族和民族平均分数的差异是否有意义？对这些问题的回答将为分析一个基本问题奠定基础：参与“领先计划”是否会影响长期结果，如高中毕业率、少女怀孕、犯罪活动和前参与者自己孩子的学业成就？

9512670 Currie Head Start is one of the most popular and widely-known early intervention programs in the country. Policy makers and the general public appear to believe that the benefits of Head Start and well-known and well-documented. However, a careful reading of the literature shows that the evidence in support of lasting effects of Head Start is limited. Previous research by the investigators indicates that Head Start has significant effects on the test scores and schooling attainment of young white children and these effects persist into adolescence. But among black children, there is no evidence that the immediate gains associated with any lasting effect on human capital outcomes. However, their research is based on a very small sample and few of the differences are statistically significant. This project will provide further evidence about who gains from Head Start by examining the form of the benefits and the persistence of the benefits using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young (NLSY) in combination with the National Longitudinal Survey s Child-Mother files (NLSCM) and the Panel Study of Dynamics (PSID). The NLSY and NLSCM provide an extensive set of information on an array of child human capital outcomes including cognitive test scores and educational attainment. Children in those data are relatively young and so it is not possible to fully examine the longer run effects of Head Start. This gap will be filled by exploiting a special module of the PSID that was designed, in part, by the Principal Investigators of this project. The module contains a rich education history which will be combined with over twenty five years of longitudinal data on labor market outcomes of respondents and their parents. More specifically, this project seeks to answer three questions raised by previous research about Head Start. First, can a case be made for early intervention programs or are child outcomes really largely predetermined by maternal endowments as some have claimed. Second, are cognitive test scores a meaningful yardstick for measuring the effects of early intervention programs, and are racial and ethnic differences in average scores meaningful when judged in terms of more concrete outcomes? Answers to these questions will set the stage for the analysis of the fundamental question: does Head Start participation affect long-term outcomes such as high school completion, teenage pregnancy, criminal activity, and the schooling attainment of the former participants' own children?