“Early Childhood Intervention and Life-Cycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start”, 2009-07-01 (; backlinks):
This paper provides new evidence on the long-term benefits of Head Start using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
I compare siblings who differ in their participation in the program, controlling for a variety of pre-treatment covariates.
I estimate that Head Start participants gain 0.23 standard deviations on a summary index of young adult outcomes. This closes 1⁄3rd of the gap between children with median and bottom quartile family income, and is about 80% as large as model programs such as Perry Preschool.
The long-term impact for disadvantaged children is large despite “fade-out” of test score gains.