Tuesday, April 12, 2011

It's Everybody's Business to Invest in Early Childhood Development Programs

"For every dollar spent on early childhood development we save $17 on the cost of juvenile homes, jails, welfare, or remedial programs."

"Investing in our children between the ages of zero and five is one of the most important uses of our limited resources that we can make."

The United Way of Southeast Michigan has prepared the following short video on early childhood education:

Diverging Pathways: How Wealth Shapes Opportunity for Children

Racial disparities in households with young children are dramatic:

•• In 2007, 32% of white households with young children were income-poor and 14.2% had no assets. In sharp contrast, 69% of Latino and 71% of blacks were income-poor, and 40% had no assets.

Racial disparities in child outcomes start early and grow over time:

•• At nine months, all children start out with fairly similar scores on a standard child development test, but by two years of age, racial disparities emerge.

The wealth gap widened for households with children:

•• Between 1994 and 2007, the wealth gap between white and black households with children
increased by $22,000 -almost doubling from $25,000 to $47,000.

•• In 2007, black households with children held only 4% of the wealth of white households.

•• From 2005 to 2007, black households living with zero or negative net worth (debt) grew from
35% to 39% while it stayed constant at 15% for white households.

Maternal education matters, but alone cannot eliminate racial wealth disparities:

•• For every dollar of wealth owned by a white mother with a bachelor’s degree or higher in 1994
a black mother owned 64 cents. By 2007, it had fallen to 13 cents.

•• The wealth gap between white and black mothers with a bachelor’s degree or higher grew five
times larger between 1994 and 2007 to an astonishing $128,000.

The above are from a new report by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The full report is located at:

insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/DivergingPathways.pdf