Story time is not the only thing happening at preschool. Photo: jGregor's (flickr)

You might want to start putting your days in nursery school on your resume. A recent study found that children in the U.S. with access to preschool almost always outperformed their peers — even decades after the class adjourned, says NPR's Planet Money.

The results were astonishing. Kids from the preschool group were less likely to be arrested and more likely to have a job. Among those with jobs, those who went to preschool made more money than those who did not.

There are other benefits as well. Children who attend preschool are more likely to have a savings account, get sick less often, and own homes. These factors could greatly improve their quality of life, reports one long-term study.

Preschool in the federal budget could be a small investment that would reap big returns. The study reported that for every dollar spent, the government would directly save almost $1.06. In other words, if preschool were subsidized, both the recipients and the government would benefit. The feds would collect more income taxes while the costs of incarceration and welfare would decrease — a no-brainer for a government looking to cut long-term spending without increasing the tax rate.

Everyday life on the Congo. Photo: Julien Harneis (Flickr)

The River has seen everything: poverty, political chaos, violence. It has been mythicized in great stories of expeditions (see Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness) and exploited by outsiders. Its winding white-water rapids symbolize the struggle of the people that live along it, who have always depended on it for their livelihoods. These people transport goods and food up and down the river, creating a "floating market" that brings life to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Learn more about the "lifeblood" of the Congo in NPR's latest in-depth feature on the river that sustains one of the poorest countries in the world.

Educated citizens of developing countries often move abroad to find higher paying jobs. Photo: Jakko (flickr)

“Brain drain” sounds like a pretty scary thing, right? It’s the term often used to describe what happens to developing countries when their best and brightest citizens leave to find work abroad. But does it always have to be a bad thing? NPR’s Planet Money blog profiles a new study that suggests that emigration can have many benefits, especially for the migrants themselves.

For the study, economists John Gibson and David McKenzie tracked the top high school students from five countries over a period of 28 years. The countries — Ghana, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, and New Zealand — all have an especially high reputation for producing skilled emigrants. Gibson and McKenzie asked these people about their migration patterns and current ties to their homelands and concluded that it makes financial sense for talented citizens to leave developing countries to work abroad.

“The best and brightest stand to earn $40,000-$70,000 more per year by working abroad – which is at least two to three times as much as the developing country individuals would earn at home. Even accounting for differences in costs of living, this is a huge gain and benefit of migration for these individuals.”

Furthermore, migrants send an average of $5,000 a year back to their home countries. That may not seem like a lot when compared to New Zealand’s 2009 per capita income of $27,400, but consider that Papua New Guinea’s was $2,300 and Ghana’s was $1,500 (figures from the CIA World Factbook). That additional money gives developing economies a welcome boost.

Instead of worrying about brain drain, Gibson and McKenzie suggest that developing countries should "focus instead on the basics of providing the policy environment needed to foster growth and innovation at home." But until then, talented citizens from developing countries will probably continue to look for economic opportunities far from home.

Admittedly this clever video has no obvious connection to economics. But it's happy and worth sharing.

Haitians load bags of food donated by the United States onto a truck for distribution to earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince after the January earthquake. Photo: Jenny Vaughan/Mercy Corps

In Haiti, rice is king. It’s consumed at every meal and forms an important source of income for many people — wholesalers, street vendors, and farmers. But the January earthquake has left the rice market in shambles.

Cheap rice from the United States made up about 80 percent of all rice in Haiti before the earthquake. But Haiti’s ports were damaged by the earthquake and could only receive a fraction of the shipments they used to. Shipments of military and humanitarian supplies were prioritized above commercial shipments of rice, which led to rice shortages and huge price increases that many people couldn’t afford.

Foreign aid flowed in to make up the difference, but this has long-term consequences for Haiti's food supply chain, says NPR. Most people get their rice from street vendors, who get theirs from mini-wholesalers. These wholesalers buy from larger wholesalers, who buy imported rice. But the influx of donated rice means that many people have flat-out stopped buying rice.

The situation has become especially dire for the street vendors and mini-wholesalers. The large wholesalers have access to credit to help them survive the crisis, but small businesses aren’t so lucky, as NPR and Frontline explain in this video.

As commercial rice imports start to flow back into Haiti and supply increases, rice has become cheaper than it was before the earthquake. The plunge in prices is forcing rural farmers to choose between eating the rice that they grow and selling it to pay school fees for their children. To make matters worse, the rice-growing regions are largely outside the earthquake zone, where foreign food aid isn't being distributed. As a result, many farmers are going hungry to send their kids to school.

So what are aid groups doing to solve the free rice problem? Now that the rice supply is beginning to stabilize, the World Food Programme has begun distributing cash or vouchers that can be redeemed for rice. In the Frontline video, WFP analyst Ceren Gurken said that the voucher program was in the works; it has been implemented since the video was filmed. Because the WFP pays street vendors for the rice, who pay that money back up the supply chain, the economy gets a chance to recover. At present, it doesn't look like farmers are being included in the program, though that may change.

Sure, the vouchers have their downsides — hand out too many and demand spikes, bringing sky-high prices — but for now, they’re the best way for aid groups to make sure that Haiti’s food supply chain stays connected. If it breaks, there could be a whole new disaster.

Street vendors in Calcutta are among the 300 million Indians who aren't cashing in on the prosperity generated by the growing Indian economy. Photo: FriskoDude (Flickr)

Imagine the entire population of the United States — just over 300 million people — living in ramshackle homes, struggling to feed and clothe their families. That's about how many Indians are impoverished. According to a recent report by NPR, although India’s economy is growing at around 8 percent a year, about a quarter of the population is missing out on the benefits of robust economic growth.

Many of the jobs being added to the Indian economy aren’t accessible to everyone, says NPR. For example, rural villagers and poor city dwellers lack the skills to fill jobs in India’s expanding service sector, meaning you can't work in a call center if you can’t speak English or have never used a computer. Partha Sen, director of the Delhi School of Economics, suggests that manufacturing jobs would help create income for impoverished Indians. He says, "so far as I know the only way out of poverty for [a] hugely overpopulated economy is through manufacturing."

NPR reports that unless a country discovers oil, manufacturing is a necessary step between poverty and prosperity. Nations that are prosperous now, like the U.S., the UK and China, went through an era of manufacturing that allowed the lower classes to pull themselves out of poverty over a few generations. But in India, certain laws discourage corporations from setting up shop. As a result, many of India’s poor can’t find work.

To make matters worse, because many impoverished Indians don’t technically qualify as “poor” under government standards, they are ineligible for subsidized food and other services, reports The Wall Street Journal. For 25 kilograms of rice and 10 kilograms of wheat, a family with a rare, government-issued ration card pays $4 per month, about half of what others pay.

The Wall Street Journal says that the government plans to adjust their criteria so that an estimated 100 million more Indians will become “poor,” even though this figure may still underestimate the number of people in need. If job creation continues to be limited to the service sector, India's poor could be left behind as the economy booms without them.

Paul Farmer is a tireless campaigner against the world's "stupid deaths." His hands-in-the-dirt work on behalf of diseases that afflict the poorest of the poor in places like Haiti and Rwanda was chronicled in the 2003 NYT bestseller, Mountains Beyond Mountains. He's also eloquent voice for health care as a human right.

Paul Farmer took a break from his humanitarian work in Rwanda to contribute this convincing essay on NPR's Weekend Edition last Saturday.