~Views from the Economists as it relates to Early Childhood~

Given those considerations, the field of economics also contributes by showing that alternative decision-making rules can help when allocating resources:

• Need bas ed. Policymakers implement policies that focus on outcomes that are particularly bad in the community. For example, if data suggest that child abuse and neglect are higher in a given community than in most other peer communities, then that community might decide to focus on a home visiting program that specifically addresses this issue.
• Outcome based. Policymakers may simply prioritize particular outcomes, based on such considerations as the values their constituents have rather than using the comparative rankings of communities on indicators. For instance, the legislature might choose improving the well-being of children in the foster care system as its signature issue and, as a result, focus on implementing programs that target children in foster care.
• Effectiveness based. This rule would lead to a policy that chooses the one approach that provides the greatest impact on outcomes for a given level of funding. Thus, based on this rule, the community would select the one early childhood program that provides the greatest dollar benefits for the number of children that can be served with the available funds.
• Cost-saving based. This decision-making rule requires that programs or strategies produce enough savings to pay back their costs in the long run. In contrast to the effectiveness-based approach, in this case, a program might have the biggest effect on outcomes of all the programs, but, if it did not pay for itself in the long run, it would still not be chosen.
• Marginal net benefit based. In this case, policymakers would fund programs or approaches up to the point at which the net benefits to the next person served are equal across programs. This decision-making rule would generally result in funding multiple programs up to the levels at which the marginal net benefits were equal.