News and Announcements
Jamaican Early Childhood Stimulation Study Shows Benefits Last Through Age 31
A group of infants and toddlers in Jamaica who received developmental stimulation—via home visits and nutritional support—continue to show benefits from this intervention as adults three decades later, according to a new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.Marketplace cites research on intergenerational cost-benefit analysis of early childhood education
Highlighting recent research on the long-lasting benefits of the Perry Preschool Project, an American Public Radio Marketplace story made the case Investing in early childhood education is an effective way to create a more equitable society. The story cited research from Jorge Luis García, Frederik H. Bennhoff, Duncan Ermini Leaf, and James Heckman that used real life-cycle data on program participants, their siblings, and their children to produce more accurate estimates of the return on investment of such programs.Prof. Heckman’s work on the Perry Preschool Program featured in the New York Times
With free universal preschool – part of the proposed American Families Plan – “you’re creating a ladder into the middle class,” CEHD director Prof. James J. Heckman told the New York Times. The story cited the Center’s long-running research on the Perry Preschool Program that shows quality early childhood education can lead to greater earnings, higher levels of education and less criminal activity.Book Launch: ‘Jan Tinbergen and the Rise of Economic Expertise’
On Monday, June 21, Professor Heckman participated in a virtual book launch for Jan Tinbergen and the Rise of Economic Expertise, a new volume on Tinbergen, the first Nobel Prize winner in Economics, and his “crucial contribution is the theory of economic policy and the legitimation of economic expertise in service of the state.”CEHD Research Featured in New Book on the Scale-Up Effect
CEHD Director James Heckman, Associate Director Alison Baulos, and Research Associate Jin Zhou have contributed a chapter to the recently published book, The Scale-Up Effect in Early Childhood and Public Policy: Why Interventions Lose Impact at Scale and What We Can Do About It.
The data provide clear guidelines for action. American policy should acknowledge the power of the accident of birth. A child does not choose the family he or she is born into. But society can enrich the opportunities of disadvantaged children to flourish.
– James J. Heckman
Events and Workshops
1:30pm
Zoom
Lifecycle Working Group
The Lifecycle Working Group, organized by James Heckman, Steven Durlauf, and Jin Zhou, invites faculty, researchers and graduate students to present work that applies the comprehensive lifecycle approach to the study of human flourishing. The workshop takes place on Tuesdays at 1:30PM on Zoom. This interdisciplinary workshop is open to the campus research community. Learn about upcoming sessions.
12:30pm
Zoom
The Demography Workshop
The Demography Workshop, set up by the Population Research Center at NORC, helps make new and unique research accessible to the University of Chicago community and partners. The fall 2021 workshop is organized by the Center for the Economics of Human Development and will focus on topics related to early-life development such as intervention programs, parent-child interactions and other determinants of skills necessary for human flourishing. Learn about upcoming sessions or watch recordings of previous sessions.
November 18-19
Madison, Wisconsin
Frontiers in Genetics and Economics
The conference Frontiers in Genetics and Economics will take place on Thursday, November 18th and Friday, November 19th, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The conference will bring together economists interested in the potential for genetic data to contribute to broad, long-standing questions in economics. Learn more.
Current and Upcoming Visitors
Orhan Torul
Visiting dates: September 15, 2021 - June 30, 2022
Orhan Torul is an associate professor at the Department of Economics and a research associate at the Center for Economics and Econometrics at Boğaziçi University. He worked as a visiting researcher at the Istanbul School of Central Banking in 2015 and the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo in 2017. His research interests lie in the areas of macroeconomics, economic inequality, and political economy. His research concentrates particularly on the evolution of economic inequalities, intergenerational mobility, and their interaction with economic policies.