The Head Start Advantage

 
For more than 50 years, Head Start has provided early learning opportunities for our country’s most vulnerable children and partnered with families to ad-dress their long-term economic stability and better health prospects.Today, Head Start serves more than one million children from birth to five years old and their families each year, changing lives not just in the present but also ultimately mitigating the devastating impacts that poverty can have on the future success of these young children, their families, and even their descendants. 

This compendium compiles summaries of recent studies that represent some of the best knowledge to date about Head Start’s effectiveness. These findings, including economic analyses, longitudinal studies, and secondary analyses, reveal new long-term impacts of Head Start—not only on Head Start children as adults, but also the intergenerational impacts as those adults have children of their own. Other new findings include the effects of Head Start on specific vulnerable populations, reinforcing the program’s mission to serve the most at-risk in each community. These outcomes shed light on the critical, beneficial role Head Start plays in society in the short and long terms, ultimately pinpointing that the best investment our country can make is in our children.