Janet Currie on Improving Our Children’s Futures

Jan 6, 2025

Janet Currie, a prominent economist and expert in child development from Princeton University, delves into the critical role of early interventions in shaping children's futures. She highlights how programs like Head Start and Sure Start create lasting benefits for disadvantaged youth. Currie argues that investing more directly in children yields better outcomes, even advocating for health coverage as a cost-saving measure. Her insights underscore the importance of prioritizing children's needs and overcoming political challenges to secure effective social programs.

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INSIGHT

Measuring Adult Success

Success in adulthood can be measured in various ways.
These include income, education, and subjective happiness, according to Janet Currie.

INSIGHT

Intervention Timing

Interventions for pregnant women and preschool children have proven successful.
More research is needed on programs for adolescents, says Janet Currie.

INSIGHT

Prenatal Care Impact

Negative events during pregnancy, like famines or disasters, have long-lasting effects on children.
Conversely, improving conditions for pregnant women through income support or nutritional supplements has positive effects.

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There is a natural desire on the part of governments to ensure that their future citizens -- i.e. their nation's children -- are happy, healthy and productive, and that therefore governments have policies that work to achieve that. But good intentions never guarantee good policies.

Here's where economist Janet Currie steps in. Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where she co-directs, with Kate Ho, the Center for Health and Wellbeing. In this Social Science Bites podcast, the pioneer in assessing the nexus of policy and parenting explains to interviewer David Edmonds how programs like Head Start in the United States and Sure Start in the United Kingdom provide real benefits over time to both their young clients as youths and later on in life.

After looking at a variety of programs and interventions, she details that "the general conclusion [is] that the programs that were spending more money directly on the children tended to have better outcomes."

Her findings suggest this holds true even when similar approaches don't have the same effect on adults. "[I]n the United States," she says, "if you give health insurance to adults who didn't have health insurance, they use more services, and they are happier about that, that they get to use services. But it doesn't actually seem to save very much money. On the other hand, when you cover children from a young age, that is cost effective, that does save money, and in fact, the costs of the program probably pay for themselves in terms of the reduction in illness and disability going forward."

In addition to her work at Princeton, Currie is also co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Program on Families and Children. She has been president of the American Economic Association for 2024 and has also served as president of the American Society of Health Economics, the Society of Labor Economics, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Western Economic Association. Two years ago, she received the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize "for her foundational work on the influence of context such as policy decisions, environment, or health systems on child development."