Process, Ideology, and Willingness to Pay for Reducing Childhood Poverty

Weinvestigatedtheperceivedvalueofgovernmentprogramsonearly- childhood development as a means of reducing childhood poverty. We incorpo- rated preferences for the process as well as the outcome by developing two stated- preference survey instruments. One survey directly elicited respondents’ willing- ness to pay specifically for high-quality, intensive, early-childhood development programs at federal and state levels. A second survey elicited respondents’ pref- erences for increasing or decreasing taxes and reallocating expenditures between other government programs and early-childhood programs. We found that respon- dents cared greatly about how childhood poverty was reduced, not just reducing poverty per se. The perceived effectiveness of a program and ideological perspec- tive were found to be important determinants of preferences for a poverty-reduction program. Respondents across all groups, including conservatives and respondents who perceived the effectiveness of early-childhood programs to be low, were not in favor of reducing the early-childhood program.