Mary Eschelbach Hansen () (Department of Economics, American University)
Abstract
The human services cost of adoption is about half the cost of long-term foster care for children whose birth parents’ rights have been terminated. Because adoption is an effective intervention for improving a variety of outcomes for those exposed to adverse childhood experiences, the total savings to government in areas such as special education and criminal justice is of the same magnitude as the child welfare savings. The private benefit to adopted children in terms of additional income earned over their working lives is similarly large. In all, a dollar spent on the adoption of a child from foster care yields about three dollars in benefits.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by American University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
2006-15.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
James Heckman & Pedro Carneiro, 2003.
"Human Capital Policy,"
NBER Working Papers
9495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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