• What is ECD
• The Case for ECD
• What works?
• What you can do?

So it ends at age five? -

Promise and many of our partners focus on the prenatal-through-five period because decades of neuroscience and economics research highlight that period’s unique role in establishing a human brain’s architecture and their life trajectories. It's worthwhile developmentally and financially to concentrate resources and maximize impact at this early phase. The longer we wait to intervene the more we, and children, have to pay.

That said, human development is a holistic continuum from birth through old age. It’s important to sequence and coordinate investments across all stages of life.

Is it just about kids? +

No! Unlike some animals, whose newborns can walk within hours of being born, human babies are incredibly reliant on adults for their safety, learning, and growth. The critical role for adults extends into the toddler and preschool years, too. Throughout early childhood, adults’ central responsibility is to provide stimulating environments and responsive relationships that promote healthy brain development and buffer the effects of adversity and stress.

These adults include parents, grandparents, caregivers, neighbors, child care providers, early educators, and others who regularly spend time with young children. To meet children’s needs, we must value and support these adults so they can be:

• Available: present and ready to interact with children
• Engaged: aware of the importance of early brain development and prepared to be their children’s first teachers
• Equipped: familiar with simple routines, practices, and activities to develop children’s early cognitive, social, and emotional skills
• Resourced: furnished with the necessary resources (including age-appropriate books, safe play spaces, and money – raising children is expensive!) to foster children’s growth

Above all, kids need adults who love them and are there for them physically, mentally, and emotionally. Anyone with young children in their lives can empathize with how challenging this can be. For that reason, it’s essential to reduce the numerous sources of stress in the lives of adults who care for children.

There are a lot of social issues worthy of our attention. Why should I prioritize ECD? +

Take a moment to reflect on a macro social issue, like education, health, workforce development, or poverty and inequality. Across the board, we simply can’t achieve the progress we seek without focusing on ECD. Think about it this way:

• Education: disparities in children’s language and cognitive development emerge long before kindergarten—in many cases, before their first birthdays. To help far more kids succeed in school and beyond, we have to prevent these gaps from day one.
• Health: robust development in early childhood acts as a “vaccination” against later physical and mental health issues. By ensuring all young kids have quality services and are protected from chronic stress, we can offset future health costs and generate massive savings.
• Workforce development: by building robust, transferable cognitive and social-emotional skills, we can prepare our youngest children to nimbly adapt to whatever the 21st century economy has in store. Talking, reading, and singing to babies and toddlers boosts contributes to greater productivity and earnings as adults.
• Poverty and inequality: we have powerful evidence that high-quality early interventions can disrupt cycles of poverty. And because today’s preschoolers are tomorrow’s parents, these benefits can extend exponentially into future generations.

Beyond these specific issues, pick any other: climate change, gender equity, democracy and citizenship, hunger, or the U.N.’s sustainable development goals. All of these challenges stand the best chance of being addressed if we can unleash the sum total of our collective human potential. And investing in early childhood is the most effective way to realize that potential.

What happens when we don’t prioritize early childhood? +

We can agree that all children deserve the chance to fulfill their innate promise. But we’re disturbingly far from achieving that vision, particularly on behalf of the 45% of children under six growing up in low-income families today. Major barriers include:

• Poor child and maternal health: Nearly 1 in 5 children in the US have special healthcare needs, but millions lack access to the services they require. Their mothers don’t fare much better; U.S maternal mortality has increased in recent decades, and one in nine American women suffers from maternal depression. Both maternal mortality and depression disproportionately affect women of color.
• Racial inequity: children of color represent more than half of kids under five in the U.S. today. Compared to their white peers, they are far more likely to experience poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, and preschool expulsion. And their parents face greater risk of employment barriers, unstable immigration status, unequal wages, and nonstandard work schedules that make it harder to use child care and early education programs.
• Children start school behind and can’t catch up: only 2 in 10 children in the U.S. have access to a high-quality early education, and a typical low-income 5 year old enters kindergarten more than a year behind his/her higher-income classmates in language and literacy skills. If we’re counting on primary education to prevent opportunity gaps, we’re starting way too late.
• Families are forced into poverty: Couples and single parents spend nearly 25% and 50% of their income, respectively, on childcare. Some caregivers are forced to choose between daycare and groceries. Others live in childcare deserts and are forced to quit working because no care is available. In fact, more than half of Americans live in neighborhoods with an insufficient supply of licensed child care.

If a lack of focus on early childhood causes all these problems, why don’t we talk more about it? +

Good question! Here are seven reasons that young children get overlooked in America (and no, “because they’re short” isn’t one of them!):

• No democratic representation Seniors have 47 million voters; young children have zero.
• Difficulty empathizing with young children As adults, we don’t remember our youngest years, making it easy to discount their importance.
• Lack of a formal government system Unlike K12 education, there is no system tasked with nurturing all children under five, leading to fragmented supports and services.
• Cultural norms surrounding parenting, privacy, and home life We value the privacy of the home, but this can isolate families and lead society to render quick judgments on parents.
• Investments can take decades to show returns Politicians won’t be in office when today’s 3 year olds are 13 or 30, disincentivizing spending on our youngest citizens. We end up allocating far more resources to remediation than prevention.
• Changing dynamics of child care ⅔ of young children live in homes where both parents work–compared with fewer than 1/10 in 1940–and ⅕ live with a single mother. Investments in child care haven’t risen to reflect this new reality.
• Marginalization of ECD workforce Child care workers and early educators are disproportionately women of color. To date, their work has been undervalued and underpaid at best, and invisible at worst.

Our collective lack of attention to ECD is reflected in our budget, too. As a nation, we spend only 0.4% of GDP on early childhood programs and education—half as much as the average industrialized country, and 4x less than Norway and Sweden.

We also dramatically underinvest in young kids relative to other age groups in the U.S. The federal government spends a full 10x less on young children—society’s most vulnerable population—than on healthcare and Social Security for adults. Even compared to older children, babies two and under receive the lowest total public investments per capita. This is precisely the opposite of what decades of neuroscience and economics research would recommend!

You’ve told me early childhood is a critical, foundational and underfunded issue, but what specifically makes it so important?+

There are strong scientific, economic and moral reasons for funding and prioritizing early childhood development - there are so many good reasons we’ve devoted the next explaining them!

• Part IV: What Can / Should I Do About It? ←
• Part II: Scientific, Economic, & Moral Case for ECD→