W. Steven Barnett

W. Steven Barnett is an economist and educational researcher whose work focuses on the economics of child development and related public policies, particularly early education policy. He is the Board of Governors Professor of Education (Economics and Policy) in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, and Founding Co-Director of the National Institute of Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers. Dr. Barnett earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Michigan. His 1984 benefit-cost analysis of the Perry Preschool program placed preschool investments into the framework of social investment in which preschool education and other early interventions are evaluated based on their returns to society and are not simply viewed as a public expense. More recent studies have focused on measuring the costs and benefits of full-day educational child care, meta-analysis of early childhood interventions in the United States and internationally, and evaluating the impacts of preschool programs including those designed for such specific purposes as enhancing bilingualism and executive function.