Ivan Allen College Hosts Nobel-winning Speaker at National Conference
Posted August 7, 2024
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the School of Economics hosted important discussions about childhood development and poverty, including a lecture from Nobel prize-winning economist James J. Heckman, as part of the annual conference for The Society for Economic Measurement (SEM) Aug. 1-3.
Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and an expert in the economics of human development. Through the university’s Center for the Economics of Human Development, he has conducted groundbreaking work with a consortium of economists, developmental psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, and neuroscientists, showing that quality early childhood development heavily influences health, economic, and social outcomes for individuals and society at large. Heckman has shown that there are great economic gains to be had by investing in early childhood development.
“He gave us a vocabulary, tools, and methodology with which we could answer some of these policy questions,” said Shatakshee Dhongde, associate dean for academic affairs and professor in the School of Economics, in her opening remarks at the event. “I was inspired by his work. He put poverty front and center within economics research.”
In his lecture titled “The Economics and Measurement of Child Development," Heckman detailed international examples of low-cost programs shown to effectively support early childhood development in places heavily impacted by poverty. Pinpointing the positive impact of these programs on children and the community required a more nuanced measurement of the skills children were learning, said Heckman.
“As I got into the psychology and measurement of skills, I began to have serious doubts about how we were measuring skill … The goal was to understand the mechanisms and measurement of skill formation,” Heckman said.
Measuring skills on a simple scale and using basic indicators such as IQ or other test scores is often arbitrary and provides an incomplete picture. But with the addition of testing over a longer period, assessments of parental involvement, and other measurements, a more complete view of how skills build upon each other emerges, Heckman said.
“If we build a skill base for a very disadvantaged child, later on, as we give lessons to that child … that child will develop those lessons and learn those lessons much more effectively,” Heckman said.
