Toddlers in the Capitol

Advocacy groups beseech the Maine Legislature regularly in support of their causes – they appeal to lawmakers’ sense of decency, their morals and desire for civil society, their hearts. The legislators do not yawn, for that would be wrong, but they do calculate the long line of requests against the bottom line of revenues. So today, when the advocates of the Maine Children’s Alliance come neither to appeal to the lawmakers’ finer feelings nor to ask for money but instead to show them a way to save it with some hard-nosed accounting, jubilation should fill the Capitol.

The MCA is sponsoring Infant and Toddler Awareness Day, and though anyone with an infant or toddler would report that not being aware of them at any moment is unlikely, not everyone is familiar with the growing body of information that should direct state policies on care and education.

The advocates are expected to offer, first, a study by Art Rolnick, senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Mr. Rolnick had been looking for wise investments for Minnesota, a way for that state to ensure it would have a prosperous future. After considering the argument for subsidizing businesses or building a new sports stadium, he and regional economic analyst Rob Grunewald concluded that early childhood education would yield better dollar returns over a longer period.

Their analysis is too long to reprint here, but they cite results from the well-known High/Scope study from Ypsilanti, Mich., which showed an 8-to-1 dollar return on investing in pre-school programs. Their conclusion is that “investment in human capital breeds economic success not only for those being educated, but also for the overall economy.”

Second, a study last fall by the Economic Policy Institute supports this conclusion. It says that high-quality early childhood development programs nationally not only save money upfront – less grade retention, lower special education costs – but are “likely to have an enormous positive effect on the U.S. economy by raising GDP, improving the skills of the workforce, reducing poverty and strengthening the United States’ global competitiveness.” What is true for the United States generally is true for Maine specifically.

Maine, like all states, spends a lot of time just trying to get from one budget cycle to the next without going broke. It makes long-term investments but not in the amount that other states do and not with the sort of long-term planning that a family might make when looking at its household budget.

Third and most important, Lynn Davey, research director for the Maine Children’s Alliance, has laid out for lawmakers in a policy brief on brain development what kind of early care is needed and the link between poverty and lack of achievement. One key number for lawmakers to keep in mind: More than half (55 percent) of single mothers with children under 5 live in poverty.

Later this year, legislators will be looking at ways to structure the Department of Health and Human Services to best promote Maine parents raising healthy children. The information they’re given today should help enormously.