News and Announcements
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.CEHD Scholar Spotlight: Alejandra Campos
Alejandra Campos is a Predoctoral Fellow at CEHD. During her tenure at CEHD, she has helped study the intergenerational impact of the Perry Preschool Project, and has worked on a project that aims to improve the quality of childcare centers in Indiana. Her research interests include human capital, early childhood development, education, and skills formation. She received her master’s degree in economics in 2017, her honors thesis analyzed the relationship between road infrastructure and education outcomes in Colombia.
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.
Current and Upcoming Visitors
Salvador Navarro
Visiting dates: September 29, 2020 - June 12, 2021
Salvador Navarro is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Demography and Ecology at Wisconsin. His research focuses on questions of identification in applied microeconomics problems. He has worked on topics related to education (credit constraints and information, effects of grade retention policy), crime (deterrence and the death penalty), discrimination (racial profiling), identification of dynamic models (dynamic treatment models, dynamic discrete choice models with aggregate data) and the analysis of plant level productivity amongst others.