Last month the early childhood world got a healthy dose of good news. Analysis of data from North Carolina’s famous Abecedarian Project, directed by Nobel laureate James Heckman, showed a surprising result. Children who participated in the program from birth to age 5 were in significantly better physical health 30 years later than their non-participating peers. And this result was measured through rigorous scientific method.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that actual biomarkers, as opposed to self-reports of illnesses, have been compared for adult individuals who took part in a randomized study of early childhood education,” said Frances Campbell, Frank Porter Graham senior scientist and principal investigator of the Abecedarian Project’s follow-up studies. “We analyzed actual blood samples, and a physician conducted examinations on all the participants, without knowing which people were in the control group.”
We already knew about the positive influence the project had on learning. And of course the associated cost benefits. But the extraordinary payoff in better physical health was an unknown.
“Forty years ago, it was all about cognition,” Professor Heckman said. “But it turned out that when you expand these capabilities — not only cognitive but social and emotional — one of the effects is better health. Nobody thought about that at the time.”
