A new book reviewing the application of cost-benefit analysis to social policy is part of a feature story in a summer 2009 MacArthur Foundation newsletter. La Follette School professor David Weimer and Aidan Vining of Simon Fraser University received a grant from the foundation to produce Investing in the Disadvantaged: Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Social Policies (Georgetown University Press, 2009).
The book covers 10 social policy areas: early childhood development, elementary and secondary schools, health care for disadvantaged people, mental illness, substance abuse and addiction, juvenile crime, prisoner reentry programs, housing assistance, work-incentive programs for the unemployed and employers, and welfare-to-work interventions. Each contributor discusses the applicability of cost-benefit analysis to actual programs, describing proven and promising examples.
One of the chapters, by La Follette School professor Barbara Wolfe and Nathan Tefft, identifies programs for children that are viewed as improving their human capital, reviews the research on these early childhood interventions, and discusses how cost-benefit analysis could improve them. An article they wrote for the fall 2006 La Follette Policy Report touches on some of the same themes.
Weimer and Vining are co-authors of Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, which will appear in its fifth edition early next year.
“Good social policy helps people make better investments in their own human capital — their health, skills, knowledge, and experience — so they have economic opportunity and are less likely to impose costs on society,” Weimer says. “Interventions, the programs that assist people, can and should be assessed and structured so policymakers can make the best use of society’s scarce resources.”
— posted July 29, 2009