It's a story about a very significant research program that began in the US in 1962.

At the time, poverty rates in the US were running high at around 19%.

Two years later President Lyndon Johnson was to announce his war on poverty, but before this announcement a number of different initiatives were begun to try and alleviate the impact of poverty on children, particularly black American children.

David Weikart and the principal of a primary school in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Charles Eugene Beatty began the Perry Preschool Project.

Because this was research, families living in poverty were randomly assigned into two groups: one group would receive the experimental preschool program and the other families would not (this latter group is called a control group).

Children receiving the program were aged 3-4 years and were to begin formal schooling in the following year.

They went to a preschool 2.5 hours a day during the week where they were taught by trained early childhood educators.

Families received a weekly home visit where parents were taught to create a positive learning environment in the home for their child.

Initially there was great excitement as the program results looked really promising.

The children demonstrated better achievement levels than those in the control group.

However these benefits quickly dissipated once the children moved into school and researchers were very discouraged.

The team continued to track the children throughout their lives and as time went on they found much more positive results.

Children who had attended the program stayed in school longer, and were more likely to go on to obtain some kind of qualification.

They were more likely to be employed (and therefore pay taxes) and less likely to be on welfare.

They were less likely to be teenage parents, and were less likely to commit offenses or be imprisoned.

At the latest follow-up, when participants were 55 years of age, those who had attended the program had more stable family lives, higher earnings and better physical and mental health than the control group.

Researchers found that children of the boys who attended the program are less likely to be arrested, more likely to have graduated from college and more likely to be employed than are the children the control group.

The girl children of male participants are also more likely to have graduated college and be employed.

Male children of female participants are less likely to be suspended from school, more likely to attend college and have better employment outcomes.

There were no statistically significant differences in outcomes for female children of female participants.

Stable, two-parent families were more commonly found for the program graduates and particularly so for the male graduates who were 15 times more likely to have established a stable family home for their children than control group males.

The kinds of neighbourhoods in which these participants lived were much the same, so it seems that the benefits demonstrated in the second generation are more likely due to the way program graduates parented their children.

This story tells us how important good quality early childhood programs are. They can change lives, not just today, but the lives of our grandchildren.