Let’s look back to the last time the economy was less than robust. In 1983, to help fill a $212 billion deficit, the federal government scaled back children’s summer breakfast and lunch programs, ended food stamp eligibility for 1 million families, froze Head Start funding and reduced cost-of-living increases for social programs, impoverishing millions of people and increasing the achievement gap.

Which of today’s life-saving and difference-making programs will be sacrificed in order to strengthen our economy?

Will it be the pregnancy prevention programs we desperately need in order to lower our abysmally high teen pregnancy rate? Or will it be the after-school programs that give kids a place to go and something to do (other than get into trouble)? Or food stamps? Or Section 8 vouchers, which provide federally sponsored rent subsidies for low-income families? If the looming problem is the deficit, let’s not let history repeat itself.

Back in 1983, then-Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein wrote a New York Times op-ed asking fiscal watchdogs to preserve social programs. We must see these programs not as charity, he wrote, but rather as “investments in human capital.”

There are also ways to make these investments more wisely. Let me tell you a story about a 13-year-old girl arrested for stealing a car. Incarcerating this girl for 2 years cost taxpayers $400,000. Now consider that the recidivism rate for kids like her is 80%. Do you want to spend another $400,000 on this teen -- even more if she becomes a lifelong criminal -- or do you want to invest a fraction of that cost into programs that help change the paradigm?

Through community-based aftercare programs conducted in partnership with the New York State Office of Children’s and Family Services, we helped her build the support system she needed to make better choices in life, gain confidence and believe in a positive future.

So in this way, money spent on a social program wasn’t only money saved on future incarcerations (which alone is easily more than $1 million over time); it was money earned. This girl will now become a productive, tax-paying citizen.

That’s what I call a return on investment that can help shrink deficits.