Nearly 7 years into the recovery from the Great Recession, two glaring problems remain in the U.S. economy. One is a significant slowdown in the growth of productivity (the amount of output and income generated in an average hour of work). The other is the destructive rise in income inequality in recent decades due largely to big corporations and the wealthy rewriting the rules of the economy to stack the deck in their favor. Ameliorating these two problems should be policymakers' core focus. One way to address both issues--one that would spur myriad other benefits to American families--is investing ambitiously in the country's children. This report reviews the evidence on why a major investment in America's children is such a promising economic strategy that can provide substantial social benefits--and that would more than pay for itself over time. It highlights four particular tranches of benefits: (1) Benefits that stem from having more resources invested in the care and education of children in their early years; (2) Benefits that stem from providing resources directly to families with young children to help them afford early child care and pre-kindergarten; (3) Benefits that stem from increasing labor force participation by parents (mostly mothers) of young children; and (4) Benefits that stem from the professionalization of the child care workforce. This report demonstrates that such a national investment could pay off in a number of ways.