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Book

Investing in kids : early childhood programs and local economic development

Call Number

  • H 338.973 B288 (CEN)

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Publication Information

Kalamazoo, Mich. : W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2011.

Physical Description

xix, 417 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Summary

Bartik measures ratios of local economic development benefits to costs for both early childhood education and business incentives. He shows that early childhood programs and the best-designed business incentives can provide local benefits that significantly exceed costs. --from publisher description.

Contents

  • 1. Introduction. Clarifying previous thinking ; A balanced economic development strategy : both labor demand and labor supply policies ; The advantages of thinking and acting locally ; Why consider early childhood programs and business incentives together? ; A road map for this book
  • 2. The nature and importance of local economic development benefits, and how they are affected by labor demand and labor supply. What is local economic development policy? ; The importance of local economic development ; Economic development : what is it good for? Absolutely nothing except land values? ; Hysteresis : an argument for why local job growth development might help workers ; But why are jobs said to offer "benefits"? Is there "something special" about jobs? ; But why are local jobs so important? After all, I could get those same job opportunities elsewhere ; Other possible benefits of local job growth ; Where the rubber hits the road : empirical evidence on the effects of increases in local labor demand ; Not everyone agrees : the Blanchard-Katz perspective and its policy implications ; The zero-sum-game argument : why care about local benefits when what count are national benefits? ; If growth provides benefits, why worry about the details? ; What are the labor supply policies that affect the quantity or quality of labor supply in a state or local area? ; What are the key issues in how early childhood and other labor supply programs affect local economic development benefits? ; Two perspectives on the benefits to out-movers ; How mobile is the U.S. population? ; How will a state or local area's employers respond to a local increase in labor force participation or job skills? ; What about the response at the national level? ; Conclusion
  • 3. Estimated economic development effects of well-designed business incentive programs. Types of business incentives ; Business incentive effects ; Financing and design of incentives ; Effects of local job growth on local workers ; Response to possible objections ; Conclusion
  • 4. The economic development effects of high-quality early childhood programs. Context of these three early childhood programs ; Summary of economic development benefits ; Why you should care about 1 percent effects on earnings ; Program description ; Modeling economic development effects, part 1 : spending ; Modeling economic development effects, part 2 : state labor market effects of increased labor supply of parents or former child participants ; Does this analysis treat early childhood programs fairly compared to business incentives?
  • Conclusion.
  • 5. Design matters : what features of business incentive programs and early childhood programs affect their economic development benefits? Business incentives ; Early childhood programs ; Conclusion
  • 6. Dealing with the known unknowns : how policymakers should deal with dueling estimates from researchers. Sources of uncertainty ; The best response to uncertainty ; Conclusion
  • 7. Bringing the future into the present : how policymakers should deal with the delayed benefits of early childhood programs. Discounting ; Reducing short-run costs : postponing costs through borrowing ; Reducing short-run costs : possible offsets from reduced special education costs ; Reducing short-run government costs : financing pre-K out of the K-12 school budget ; Increasing short-run benefits through capitalization ; Increasing short-term benefits : incorporating parental employment programs into early childhood programs ; Conclusion
  • 8. Who benefits? Distributional effects of early childhood programs and business incentives, and their implications for policy. Targeted pre-K versus universal pre-K ; Business incentives: who benefits ; Prekindergarten (pre-K) education : speculation about possible distributional benefits ; Baseline results for distributional effects of universal pre-K ; Adding in possible capitalization effects ; Alternative distributional assumptions ; Targeted versus universal pre-K ; Targeting within universalism : universal pre-K with income-graduated fees ; The abecedarian program : distributional effects of a large-scale targeted program ; The nurse-family partnership : distributional effects of a smaller-scale antipoverty program ; Conclusion.
  • 9. Locality matters : how economic development benefits vary in diverse local economies. What this chapter is and isn't ; The mechanisms by which locality matters ; Empirical evidence on variation across states ; Empirical evidence on metropolitan areas versus states ; Empirical evidence on metropolitan area size ; Empirical evidence on metro area growth ; Conclusion
  • 10. The national perspective : how local business incentives and early childhood programs affect the national economy. National versus state benefits of business incentives ; National versus state benefits of early childhood programs ; Macroeconomic benefits or costs from redistributing jobs ; Social benefits from more jobs : greater in high-unemployment local economies? ; Federalism and business incentives : a policy wonk's perspective ; Federalism and business incentives : a practical political perspective ; Federalism and early childhood programs : a policy wonk's perspective ; Federalism and early childhood programs : a practical political perspective ; Conclusion
  • 11. The ethics of early childhood programs and business incentives. The philosophical argument against early childhood programs ; The philosophical argument against business incentives ; Common elements to the arguments against these government programs ; The conceptual case for early childhood programs ; Are early childhood programs really opposed to family rights? ; The conceptual case for business incentives ; Conclusion
  • 12. Extending economic development analysis to other human development programs : education, public health, crime reduction. Methodology ; K-12 test scores ; Educational attainment ; Public health ; Reducing crime ; Conclusion
  • 13. Thinking and acting locally : what potential is there for local support for high-quality early childhood programs? Early childhood programs and local economic development : how do they fit into the big issues? ; What can and should be done locally? ; Is local action really politically feasible? ; New thinking about early childhood programs and local economic development.

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