Early adulthood results

Early adulthood results

The Abecedarian Project provided the rare opportunity to be able to follow more than 95% of the children living into adulthood. At age 21, the children who participated in the preschool intervention still showed signs of benefit from their participation, compared to the control group, specifically:

  • of the treatment group 67% were engaged in a skilled job or were enrolled in higher education, in contrast with only 41% of the control group.
  • young adults who had received the Abecedarian early education treatment reported fewer symptoms of depression at age 21
  • participants who received the centre-based treatment were 3.92 times more likely to report a healthy lifestyle in young adulthood compared to participants from the control groups
  • the use of illegal substances (e.g. marijuana within the past 30 days) was significantly lower for the treatment group compared to the control group.

At age 30, those in the Abecedarian Project preschool treatment group continued to show benefits from their participation in the early childhood program when compared to those in the control group. The key findings at age 30 are as follows:

  • Abecedarian participants had significantly more years of education by age 30 (13.46 years) than individuals in the control group (12.31 years).
  • Almost four times as many individuals in the treatment group (23%) compared to the control group (6%) had graduated from a four-year university degree.
  • As adults, Abecedarian participants were significantly less likely to develop hypertension and be affected by obesity.