Cannon Jill S, Kilburn M Rebecca, Karoly Lynn A, Mattox Teryn, Muchow Ashley N, Buenaventura Maya
Rand Health Q. 2018 Mar 30;7(4):6. eCollection 2018 Mar.
The past two decades have been characterized by a growing body of research from diverse disciplines-child development, psychology, neuroscience, and economics, among others-demonstrating the importance of establishing a strong foundation in the early years of life. The research evidence has served to document the range of early childhood services that can successfully put children and families on the path toward lifelong health and well-being, especially those at greatest risk of poor outcomes. As early childhood interventions have proliferated, researchers have evaluated whether the programs improve children's outcomes and, when they do, whether the improved outcomes generate benefits that can outweigh the program costs. This study examines a set of evaluations that meet criteria for scientific rigor and synthesizes their results to better understand the outcomes, costs, and benefits of early childhood programs. The authors focus on evaluations of 115 early childhood programs serving children or parents of children from the prenatal period to age 5. Although preschool is perhaps the best-known early childhood intervention, the study also reviewed such programs as home visiting, parent education, government transfers providing cash and in-kind benefits, and those that use a combination of approaches. The findings demonstrate that most of the reviewed programs have favorable effects on at least one child outcome and those with an economic evaluation tend to show positive economic returns. With this expanded evidence base, policymakers can be highly confident that well-designed and -implemented early childhood programs can improve the lives of children and their families.
在过去二十年中，来自儿童发展、心理学、神经科学和经济学等不同学科的研究越来越多，这些研究表明在生命早期建立坚实基础的重要性。研究证据记录了一系列早期儿童服务，这些服务能够成功地让儿童和家庭走上终身健康和幸福的道路，尤其是那些面临不良后果风险最大的儿童和家庭。随着早期儿童干预措施的激增，研究人员评估了这些项目是否能改善儿童的成果，以及当它们确实产生改善效果时，这些改善的成果所带来的好处是否能超过项目成本。本研究考察了一组符合科学严谨性标准的评估，并综合其结果以更好地理解早期儿童项目的成果、成本和效益。作者重点关注了115个早期儿童项目的评估，这些项目服务于从孕期到5岁儿童及其父母。尽管学前教育可能是最广为人知的早期儿童干预措施，但该研究还审查了诸如家访、家长教育、提供现金和实物福利的政府转移支付以及采用多种方法结合的项目。研究结果表明，大多数被审查的项目对至少一项儿童成果有积极影响，而那些进行了经济评估的项目往往显示出正的经济回报。有了这一扩大的证据基础，政策制定者可以非常有信心地认为，精心设计和实施的早期儿童项目能够改善儿童及其家庭的生活。
