The Effect of Early Childhood Education on Adult Criminality: Evidence from the 1960s through 1990s

We compare the effects of early childhood education on adult crimi-nal behavior across time periods, using administrative crime data that provide significant precision advantages over existing work. We find that improvements in early childhood education led to large (20 per-cent) reductions in later criminal behavior, reductions that far exceed those implied by estimates of test score gains in prior studies. While the benefits generated account for a large portion of the costs of the education provided, we find substantial relative gains from the target-ing of funds to high-poverty areas and areas without existing access to subsidized care. (JEL H75, I21, I26, I28, I32, I38, K42)