Submitted by crinadmin on
The effectiveness of public investment in New Zealand children underlines the economic cost resulting from inadequate investment in young children. Using a human capital framework, the report documents the economic impacts of poor child outcomes. The focus is solely economic and does not address political, social equity or child rights implications of child outcomes. It is entirely evidence- based and draws upon a wide range of international literature. Drawing on OECD data, Infometrics find that child outcomes in New Zealand are typically almost twice as bad as outcomes obtained in Denmark, which is the best performing of thirty OECD countries. Greater levels of investment in early-years education, health and poverty reduction are warranted by economic analysis of positive impacts, but are not in themselves sufficient. Firstly, it should be observed that economic growth and prosperity typically improve child outcomes. Secondly, the effectiveness of early childhood policies, programmes and interventions vary considerably from one country to another. Not only is New Zealand one of the poorest performing countries of the OECD in terms of cold outcomes, but its results for every dollar spent is among the least effective. North European countries such as Denmark achieve the best outcomes with the highest rates of per child public spend. The Netherlands achieve a startling result. Although they spend only a fraction per child of the Nordic countries they achieve nearly comparable child outcomes. In other words, their programmes are very effective and much less costly. It needs to be borne in mind, though, that their public expenditure per child is nearly twice that of New Zealand's. Further information