Tomorrow I'm scheduled to sit down with economist James Heckman of the University of Chicago. Heckman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2000 for a statistical model he developed in the field of econometrics. But in recent years, Heckman has become famous for something else. He is perhaps the leading advocate in the U.S. for investing in early childhood. Heckman has run the numbers in an impressive number of academic papers, and he says there's almost no better way for a society to spend its money than on early childhood.
"There are many projects out there, but few have the rate of return of early childhood investments," Heckman says.
Check out this video for a preview of why Heckman thinks early childhood education is so important, and stay tuned in the coming weeks for my interview:
