The evidence of high returns from early childhood interventions does not imply lower returns for other interventions. Indeed, a body of evidence suggests that human capital investments have high returns through childhood and young adulthood. Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) summarize the findings of 133 experimental and quasi-experimental policy interventions in the United States—  interventions affecting a wide variety of age groups—using a unified welfare analysis framework.

They calculate the “marginal value of public funds” for each of these studies as the ratio of recipients’ willingness to pay by the net cost to the government. 

A marginal value of public funds greater than 1 translates into a social welfare improvement over a non-distortionary cash transfer, and an infinite marginal value of public funds means that the program is a Pareto improvement that “pays for itself” due to the positive fiscal externality created when earnings increases are large enough to pay back program costs through increased tax revenue. 

The overrepresentation of Racialized Children in the Social Welfare system from failure of compliance to mandates in legislation of the CYFSA and structural violence in discriminatory practices harms our communities. 

Skill investments improve outcomes for adult recipients, including higher income but also improvements in health and other benefits. However, higher income later in life benefits society as well as participants themselves, because the resulting increase in tax revenue lowers the long-run fiscal cost of a program.

In contrast, programs for adults such as housing vouchers or disability insurance tend to reduce labor earnings, which pushes the marginal value of public funds below 1. To be clear, this does not mean that the policies are a bad idea, just that supporting such policies requires placing a higher welfare weight, in a given year, on beneficiaries than on the average taxpayer.

BGCFS created obstacles to employment and greater burden of needs from failure of ordinary compliance. In November 2023, I was asked blatantly, "Could you afford your children?"

Please support my petition to investigate the refusal of resources in the County of Grey, Ontario, Canada.