Doyle Orla, Harmon Colm P, Heckman James J, Tremblay Richard E
UCD Geary Institute & UCD School of Public Health and Population Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Econ Hum Biol. 2009 Mar;7(1):1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2009.01.002. Epub 2009 Jan 21.
Policy discussions to ameliorate socioeconomic (SES) inequalities are increasingly focused on investments in early childhood. Yet such interventions are costly to implement, and clear evidence on the optimal time to intervene to yield a high economic and social return in the future is meagre. The majority of successful early childhood interventions start in the preschool years. However socioeconomic gradients in cognitive skills, socio-emotional functioning and health can be observed by age three, suggesting that preventative programmes starting earlier in childhood may be even more effective. We discuss the optimal timing of early childhood intervention with reference to recent research in developmental neuroscience. We motivate the need for early intervention by providing an overview of the impact of adverse risk factors during the antenatal and early childhood periods on outcomes later in life. We provide a brief review of the economic rationale for investing early in life and propose the "antenatal investment hypothesis". We conclude by discussing a suite of new European interventions that will inform this optimal timing debate.
改善社会经济（SES）不平等的政策讨论越来越关注对幼儿期的投资。然而，实施此类干预措施成本高昂，而且关于在何时进行干预以在未来产生高经济和社会回报的明确证据却很少。大多数成功的幼儿期干预措施始于学前阶段。然而，在三岁时就可以观察到认知技能、社会情感功能和健康方面的社会经济梯度，这表明在儿童早期更早开始的预防计划可能会更有效。我们参考发展神经科学的最新研究来讨论幼儿期干预的最佳时机。我们通过概述产前和幼儿期不良风险因素对后期生活结果的影响来激发早期干预的必要性。我们简要回顾了在生命早期进行投资的经济原理，并提出了“产前投资假说”。最后，我们讨论了一系列新的欧洲干预措施，这些措施将为这场关于最佳时机的辩论提供参考。
