As fiscal constraints force the federal government to make difficult choices about which programs to fund, a new MacArthur initiative is using research and benefit-cost analysis to strengthen the case for more evidence-based policymaking. The Power of Measuring Social Benefits is a $35 million policy research initiative that seeks to challenge the view that social spending is too often wasteful and ineffective. Its intention is to strengthen the case for social policy making that is more firmly grounded in evidence-of-effectiveness and complementary benefits to recipients and society.

“We seek policymaking based on solid evidence, not short-term politics,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton in a speech at a national policy forum on benefit-cost analysis in Washington, DC run by the University of Washington. “This initiative tests the proposition that well run public programs for people in trouble or in need can help them and also benefit the larger society, thus possibly animating the next wave of domestic policy reform, and reviving our faith in effective government.”

The precedent for this new initiative is the 1962 Perry pre-school project, the first study to quantify the costs and life-long benefits of early education. Researchers followed young children through adulthood, demonstrating that a carefully designed pre-school experience increased the potential for high school graduation, future employment and income, federal taxes paid, and money saved over time through less involvement in the criminal justice system and lower demands on welfare. The economic return was about $16 per $1 invested; 25 percent of total benefits accrued to the participant and 75 percent to society at large.

MacArthur seeks to help accelerate the rate at which evidence-based practices are adopted. The Foundation’s strategy includes (1) supporting cost-benefit analyses in a wide array of domestic policy areas; (2) strengthening methods and standards for the conduct of such studies; and (3) increasing demand for such studies by policymakers as a guide to decision making.

Work is already well underway. Support is being provided to institutions such as the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute, Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago and MDRC to conduct analyses of an innovative prisoner re-entry program in Chicago; the costs and benefits of mandated community treatment of the mentally ill in four counties in New York State; the short- and long-term effects of extending the upper age of foster care to age 21, and the work of Experience Corps, a mentoring program in Baltimore inner city schools. Of particular interest here is measurement and monetization of the health effects of volunteer activity on the elderly mentors as well as the education benefits to the young children.

The availability of such studies will have little effect unless policymakers demand this kind of evidence-of-effectiveness. Therefore, the Foundation is supporting organizations like the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group sponsored by the Council for Excellence in Government. The Coalition has helped the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice to strengthen the link between research and policy and, with MacArthur support, will deepen and extend its work to other domestic policy agencies.

The Power of Measuring Social Benefits is part of a larger portfolio of crosscutting domestic policy work that includes the MacArthur Research Network on an Aging Society, under the direction of former Aetna chairman and CEO John Rowe, which is exploring how increased longevity is affecting society and institutions. One of the Network’s early products will be new projections of life expectancy that may carry major economic and social implications. A third project is a nonpartisan expert committee, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration, to examine the country’s long-term fiscal challenges, weigh intergenerational and other significant trade-offs, and propose scenarios for helping the U.S. return to fiscal health.