But societies also pay a heavy price — in lower returns on educational investments, in reduced skills and productivity, in the increased likelihood of unemployment and welfare dependence, in the higher costs of social protection and judicial systems, and in the loss of social cohesion. In the medium term, these costs must be met in the hard currency of the billions of extra dollars spent in attempting to cope with the wide range of problems associated with high levels of child poverty. The economic argument, in anything but the shortest term, is therefore heavily on the side of preventing children from falling into poverty in the first place.