Session: Issues in the Economic Valuation of Prevention and Intervention Outcomes: Implications for Evidence-Based Policy and Research (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

This session features three papers that address issues related to benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of social policy interventions, with a particular focus on the challenges of valuing the outcomes from such policies. The papers are motivated by the growing interest in conducting BCAs of social programs that aim to improve the lives of children, youth, and families. The demand for BCAs flows from the increased emphasis on results-based accountability when allocating public and private sector resources.

At the same time, there are a number of challenges involved in applying BCA methods to social programs. One of the key issues is attaching economic values to the outcomes from social policy interventions, as the outcomes from such programs are often in domains that are not readily monetized (e.g., socio-emotional skills, early childhood behaviors). Moreover, prevention interventions, as one class of social programs, often begin early in life when the measured impacts are less likely to have known economic values. Economic valuations may also be sensitive to the assumptions driving them, suggesting the need for field standards as well as transparency when results are communicated.

The first paper demonstrates these issues in the context of a BCA of a specific community-based prevention intervention, Communities that Care. The second paper provides an empirical basis for linking early measures of socio-emotional skills to outcomes in later life that have economic implications using data from three intervention projects. The third paper introduces a new online database of shadow prices developed for use with BCAs of social programs.  The discussant will comment on the policy and prevention issues raised by these papers, particularly in relation to recent efforts by the Society for Prevention Research Task Force on Economic Analyses of Prevention to provide guidance around BCAs of prevention interventions.