On estimating the fiscal benefits of early intervention

Their paper Feinstein, Chowdry and Asmussen explain some of the difficulties of providing forecasts of the financial benefits of early intervention programmes, focussing on those delivered during the early childhood period. We highlight the diversity of early intervention, and the complexity and multiplicity of outcomes. Summarising recent work at the Early Intervention Foundation they assess the evidence on the impacts of early intervention, describe new ways of assessing accurately the local fiscal costs of late intervention and consider the implications of this for addressing the well-established barriers to investment in prevention.