Why this economist is 'giddy' about Biden's plans to invest in low income families

Melissa Kearney: Yes, so I will say, I am giddy about this proposal, honestly, because so many policy experts, we have been arguing for years that our country does far too little to invest in children. And so this is a real recognition that we need to do more to invest in children, to make sure all children get to school with the ability to succeed. The price tag on these proposals, to my mind, are just not that great, when held up against the benefits that evidence suggests we will see from them. If I have a concern, it's that this is a lot of money, as you pointed out. And so a lot of measures are going to need to be put in place to make sure that the money is well-spent. So, universal preschool is not going to deliver universal benefits if it is low-quality, right? Access to childcare is not going to be good for kids and families if it is not high-quality. When we look from lessons from other well-targeted programs that have yielded benefits or for other countries, they spend a lot of money on these programs. And so they are going to be a trade-off in terms of targeting it on the kids who would really benefit, targeting these programs on families who wouldn't otherwise afford them to make sure that the programs are well-funded and well-designed and really high-quality. Otherwise, we're just going to be wasting a lot of money.