[IAEP] Economics of childhood programs

[Chris Leonard]

Here is a link to an interesting thought piece that was recently published
by the Yoyodyne, er, I mean Rand Corporation.  It is an attempt to frame the
argument for early-childhood interventions in economic terms, namely the
creation of human capital.  The specific examples discussed are hypothetical
and aimed at pre-school ages, but modulo the precise age range and
hypothetical details, the argument is readily adapatable to thoughtful
consideration of olpc efforts as a matter of public policy.

The Economics of Early Childhood Policy
What the Dismal Science Has to Say About Investing in Children
http://rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP227/

"Economic analysis increasingly plays a role in the debate on the merits of
early childhood programs, but many people are unprepared to participate in
the discussion," said Rebecca Kilburn, the report's lead author and an
economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "The report is
intended to provide clarity and structure for making use of such research."

The coldly clinical language and the reduction of childhood tragedy to
mathematical terms can be somewhat off-putting and it is clear that
economics has earned itself the sobriquet of "the dismal science".  It is
however a useful exercise to consider how to make the olpc "elevator pitch"
to people of differing backgrounds and perspectives.  Folks at the the
government ministry level may well be more attuned to arguments made using
these metrics and such arguments may also be helpful in addressing some of
the common themes of criticism to olpc approaches.

To some extent it may also provide a framework in which proprietary versus
open-source as upstream inputs going into the "material goods", "service
inputs", "others time" and "others human capital" terms of the derived
equations can be weighed and considered against each other.

cjl
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