James Heckman

So my long answer to your question about parents and what they'll do is as that cultural norm shifts, where it's no longer I live here, I go to school there, that almost by definition motivates parents or will cause them to be more motivated because they'll simply have to make that decision.

Is that, are there ways, I recently did an interview with James Heckman, the Nobel Prize winner, whose work on early interventions into, you know, at-risk children has often been willfully misinterpreted as a blanket endorsement of every kind of bad universal preschool program, pre-K program, or, you know, Head Start.

It's actually much more you know, kind of nuance than that.

But, you know, he talked about ways in which you get parents often who don't have education or don't, they didn't value it for themselves, but they do for their kids.

So I'll just share briefly with where that came from.

So I think it was in the 90s or early 2000s, a famous economist named James Heckman studied effective pre-K programs across the country.

And so parents always want their kids to get ahead.

And they want their kids to be reading at like a third grade level where they're in kindergarten.

The cleanup batter will be Frank Thomas, playing left field.

Batting fifth and playing right field, Jim Heckman.

At

first base, the sixth man in the batting order, Tim

Join the millions who have made Rheingold New York's largest selling beer.

Mets coming to bat for the second time.

It'll be Jim Heckman leading off for New York.

He'll be followed by Tim Harkness and Al Moran.

It is going, going, going on.

So Jim Heckman with his second home run of this ballgame and two times up.

That one coming off a 3-0 pitch.

Putting the Mets in front by a score of 3-0.

This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez.

Special thanks to Stephanie DeLuca, James Heckman, Alison Baulos, Derek Neal, as well as Sheila Griffin, Anthony Brick, Richard Murnane, Paul E. Peterson, Steve Drummond, and Corey Turner.

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes...

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So I had some exposure growing up to public policy, statistics, econometrics.

I met Jim Heckman when I was two years old and people like Ken Arrow.

These are the people who I kind of saw as I was growing up as they would come to visit India at the Indian Statistical Institute.

As I grew up, I knew I was interested in science.

First, early childhood education.

James Heckman, the Nobel laureate economist, his work shows huge returns like 7, 10 percent per year on high quality early interventions for disadvantaged kids.

It helps close achievement gaps and maybe even the innovation gap, making it more likely they become inventors themselves later.

Starting early makes sense.

Ball three, a full count, three and two.

The right fielder, Jim Heckman, will be up next.

Now, Harry Chitty will be running.

There he goes.

But your book, Dead Men Ruling, If you go to Gene's website, there are fantastic testimonials by Nobel Prize winners, by the late, great Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, by just a who's who of people that have interacted with Gene and have read his stuff.

And Jim Heckman says on your website that he started reading... dead man ruling, and he couldn't put it down.

Now, to get that praise from Heckman, nobody gets that praise from Heckman.

Heckman never gives that.

Heckman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Chicago, and anybody who knows Jim Heckman knows that he's not handing out compliments ever, okay? So this is like the nicest thing I've ever heard, and I guess the strongest praise I've ever heard Heckman provide for anyone.

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