Children, mostly three years old, were randomly assigned to 2 groups, Treatment group and control group. Treatment group included 58 children and control group included 65 children between 1962 and 1965. Children in the treatment group received two academic years of schooling before they entered the regular school system at about age five, while children in the control group did not. The project collected information on the children through age 19 (an exceptionally long follow-up period.)
Analysts estimated that two years of preschool generated social net benefits of $13,124 at a discount rate of 5 percent.
Answer questions below [Note this question pertains to valuation of impacts.]
a) Before seeing results from the project, what would be your main methodological concern about such a long follow-up period? What data would you look at to see if the problem exists?
b) Benefit categories beyond the age of 19 included crime reduction, earnings increase, and reductions in welfare receipts. If you were designing the study, what data would you collect to help measure these benefits?