Most arguments for teaching children about feelings are made in the language of feelings. Warmth, connection, kindness, the whole vocabulary.

That language is true and it convinces nobody who was not already convinced. So here is the version written by economists.

The number

$11 : $1
benefit-to-cost ratio across six social-emotional learning programmes (Belfield et al., 2015, Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University)

The team costed six SEL programmes properly — materials, personnel time, training, the lot. Then they modelled the benefits: improved social competence, better school climate, reduced bullying, reduced substance use, higher academic achievement, and the downstream economic consequences of all of it.

Eleven dollars back for every dollar spent. Averaged across the six.

Why an economist even gets involved

Because school budgets are finite and everything competes with everything. “Children should feel safe” does not win against a roof repair. A benefit-cost ratio does.

This is also why SEL survived the political fight described elsewhere on this blog. Bills to remove it appeared in at least twenty-five states from 2021, and most of them failed — not purely on principle, but because the programmes were already in place, already budgeted, and already producing the kind of numbers administrators can defend.

By 2023–24, 83% of US school principals reported using an SEL curriculum, up from 76% two years before. That is not a movement. That is procurement.

An eleven-to-one return is the least emotional argument for emotional skills, which is exactly what makes it durable.

The limits, because there are always limits

  • Six programmes. Not six hundred. This is a careful model, not a census.
  • Modelled benefits. Some gains are projected forward over years using established economic methods. Reasonable, but not observed cash.
  • Average, not guarantee. Individual programmes varied. A badly run programme returns badly.

What this has to do with a picture book

Honestly? Directly, not much. Nobody has run a benefit-cost analysis on bedtime, and if they had, the cost side would be difficult to fill in.

Indirectly, quite a lot. The reason we can say with a straight face that emotional skills are worth ten minutes of a busy evening is that people with spreadsheets have independently concluded the same thing about the school day. When the warm argument and the cold argument point the same direction, the finding is probably real.

The household version of the sum

Ten minutes a night. A book you already own. A question with no correct answer.

We have no idea what the ratio is. We are fairly confident about the direction.

The studies behind this post

  1. Belfield, C., Bowden, A. B., Klapp, A., Levin, H., Shand, R., & Zander, S. (2015). The Economic Value of Social and Emotional Learning. Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. Read the study →
  2. CASEL / RAND American Principal Panel: more than 8 out of 10 U.S. schools implement SEL (83% of principals in 2023–24, up from 76% in 2021–22). Read the study →
  3. Education Week reporting on SEL and political pushback, 2023–2026, including the wave of state bills introduced from 2021 onward. Read the study →
  4. Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. Read the study →