In 1972, researchers in North Carolina started following two groups of babies from poor families. In the first group, the children were given full-time day care up to age 5 that included most of their daily meals, talking, games and other stimulating activities. The other group, aside from baby formula, got nothing.
Forty-two years later, the researchers found something they had not expected to see: The group getting care was far healthier, with sharply lower rates of high blood pressure and obesity and higher levels of “good” cholesterol.
The study, published in the journal Science, is part of a growing body of scientific evidence showing hardship in early childhood has lifelong health implications. But it goes further than outlining the problem, offering evidence a particular policy might prevent it.
“This tells us that adversity matters, and it does affect adult health,” said James Heckman, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who led the data analysis. “But it also shows us that we can do something about it, that poverty is not just a hopeless condition.”
The findings come amid a political push by the Obama administration for government-funded preschool for 4-year-olds. But a growing number of experts, Heckman among them, believe more effective public programs would start far earlier – in infancy, for example, because that is when many of the skills needed to take control of one’s life and become a successful adult are acquired.
The study in Science drew its data from the Carolina Abecedarian Project, in which about 100 infants from low-income families in North Carolina were followed from early infancy to their mid-30s.
The researchers already had answered their original question about cognitive development: whether the treated children would, for example, be less likely to fail in school. The answer was yes. Overall, the participants’ abilities as infants were about the same, but by age 3, they had diverged. By age 30, those in the group given special care were four times as likely to have graduated from college.
