Sleeper Effects in Adulthood
Despite the fadeout of test score effects, several studies have reported that children who had attended Head Start often did better socially and economically as adults. In a 2009 article, for example, David Deming compared children who attended Head Start in 1984–1990 to their siblings who had not. On tests, he found that the Head Start sibling scored 5 percentile points higher through elementary school, but that their lead had shrunk to 2 percentile points by middle school. Nevertheless, the Head Start sibling was 6 to 7 percentage points less likely to repeat a grade or be diagnosed with a learning disability, 9 percentage points more likely to graduate high school, and 7 percentage points less likely to be unemployed or suffer from poor health as young adults.
Follow-up work by Lauren Bauer and Diane Schanzenbach showed that Head Start siblings were 9 percentage points more likely to complete higher education, had a greater sense of self-esteem and self-control, and displayed more positive behaviors when they became parents themselves. Compared to siblings who hadn’t attended the program, Head Start graduates were more likely to engage in behaviors such as reading to their children, teaching them colors, shapes, numbers, and letters, providing physical affection and praise, and sharing in their children’s favorite activities.
Oh, and they didn’t spank their children as much—perhaps because they hadn’t been spanked as much themselves.
These benefits may even be passed on across generations. Elise Chor’s analysis of the Head Start Impact Study data showed that Head Start access improves children’s math skills and behavior through 3rd grade for children whose own mothers attended Head Start in their youth. Andrew Barr and Chloe Gibbs used data from Head Start’s early years to show that program attendance led to improved outcomes into adulthood among the children of Head Start participants, including greater educational attainment and less teenage pregnancy and criminal engagement.
Because of these long-term benefits, many scholars calculate that Head Start more than pays for itself. The costs of providing free care when children are young gets recouped with interest when those children reach adulthood. Data from the program’s early years indicate that Head Start’s benefits outweigh its costs by a ratio of up to seven to one through its impacts on educational attainment, criminality, and mortality. Using more recent data from the Head Start Impact Study, Patrick Kline and Christopher Walters find that, if nothing else, Head Start moves children out of other publicly funded preschool programs; accounting for cost savings in those alternative public programs alone makes Head Start pay for itself.
Where do these “sleeper effects” in adulthood come from? No one really knows. Scholars used to talk vaguely about “non-cognitive skills” that aren’t measured by reading and math tests. Yet the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Program measured a variety of social and emotional outcomes—including attentiveness, distractibility, peer relationships, “externalizing” behaviors (acting out), and “internalizing” behaviors (such as withdrawal or anxiety)—and found just as much fadeout as it did for the academic measures. At age five, the children in the Early Head Start group were doing better than the control-group children on many social and emotional outcomes, but by 5th grade the control group had caught up. Head Start Impact Study data show similar patterns, where short-term social-emotional benefits do not persist beyond the first year or two.
Twenty or more years is a long time to wait to see a financial return from Head Start, but some of the program’s benefits materialize much sooner. For example, studies by Deming, Janet Currie and Duncan Thompson indicate that when Head Start prevents grade repetition, it typically does so by the age of 10. That means the program pays back its cost in full, since repeating a year of school costs about as much as a year of Head Start.
Benefits to parents, when they occur, also show up quickly. In analyses of the Head Start Impact Study, Cuiping Schiman found that Head Start let 7 percent of mothers switch from part-time to full-time work, and Terri Sabol and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale found that Head Start helped 16 to 20 percent of parents who had already started college finish a degree or certificate within four years. Both benefits were limited to parents whose child started Head Start at age three. Note that benefits to parents are another possible explanation for sleeper effects, since parents who are more educated and more advanced in their careers may be better positioned to help their children in young adulthood.
