Universal Pre-K has huge income benefits for parents, despite limited academic effects for kids. "Excluding impacts on children, each dollar of net government expenditure yields $5.51 in after-tax benefits for families, almost entirely from parents' earnings gains." www.nber.org/papers/w3303...

Does this suggest that the money would be more effectively spent on simple providing daycare services?

I *PROMISE* I will spend all that money on other shit, pinky swear, cross my heart, whatever you want man, I love my kid's daycare but it's a bill of fully 2/3 of my mortgage every month

And yes, as a parent this is the biggest "duh" result (as I'm sure some of the authors of this paper will tell you). But that's why you do research, so we have evidence to support this intuition.

Even at pretty modest assumed marginal tax rates this means the program is revenue generating for the federal government

I guess that tracks with the fact that parents secure childcare no matter what so the kid doesn't suffer directly, but the parent ends up passing up opportunities for income