Human Capital Policy

By Pedro Carneiro, James J. Heckman. Social Science Research Network, 2003

1,896 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper considers alternative policies for promoting skill formation that are targeted to different stages of the life cycle. We demonstrate the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills that are formed early in the life cycle in accounting for racial, ethnic and family background gaps in schooling and other dimensions of socioeconomic success. Most of the gaps in college attendance and delay are determined by early family factors. Children from better families and with high ability earn higher returns to schooling. We find only a limited role for tuition policy or family income supplements in eliminating schooling and college attendance gaps. At most 8% of American youth are credit constrained in the traditional usage of that term. The evidence points to a high return to early interventions and a low return to remedial or compensatory interventions later in the life cycle. Skill and ability beget future skill and ability. At current levels of funding, traditional policies like tuition subsidies, improvements in school quality, job training and tax rebates are unlikely to be effective in closing gaps.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0403509de621c99f41847e8bc3dadaa0702fa9d5

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Citations in the corpus

The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities (2010, background): “There is a general perception that non-cognitive abilities are relatively malleable, and hence a more appropriate target for policy interventions than cognitive abilities (Carneiro and Heckman, 2003; Knudsen et al, 2006; Cunha and Heckman, 2008).”
Investing in Our Young People (2010, positive): “A substantial body of evidence suggests that returns to adolescent education for the most disadvantaged and less able are lower than the returns for the more advantaged (Meghir & Palme, 2001; Carneiro & Heckman, 2003, and the evidence they cite; Carneiro, Heckman, & Vytlacil, 2006).”
Is Early Learning Really More Productive? The Effect of School Starting Age on School and Labor Market Performance (2005, positive): “The relative magnitudes of the returns involved have led some authors to propose a reallocation of public spending from older to younger persons (for example Carneiro and Heckman, 2003 ).”
The role of education in intergenerational social mobility: Problems from empirical research in sociology and some theoretical pointers from economics (2014, background): “Work by Heckman and his associates (see e.g. Carneiro and Heckman, 2003; Heckman et al., 2006) indicates that a vector of non-cognitive traits of a kind likely to be incentiveenhancing does significantly raise earnings returns to schooling and, more generally, the importance of personality…”
The Gender Pay Gap Beyond Human Capital (2011, background): “Regarding educational outcomes, see, for example, Carneiro and Heckman (2003) and for labor market outcomes, see, for example, Murnane, Willett, Braatz and Duhaldeborde (2001), Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua (2006), and Groves (2005).”
Early Childhood Intervention and Life-Cycle Skill Development: Evidence from Head Start (2009, positive): “…one-third of the gap between the bottom permanent income quartile and the median in the CNLSY sample, and is about 80 percent as large as the gains from the Perry Preschool and Carolina Abecedarian “model” preschool programs ( Pedro M. Carneiro and James J. Heckman 2003; Michael L. Anderson 2008 .”
The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment (2004, background): “This is motivated by the existing evidence about the long-term benefits of early childhood development and early education programs (see, among others, Currie, 2001; Heckman and Carneiro, 2003; Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000 and Shore, 1997).”
Family income and children's education: Using the Norwegian oil boom as a natural experiment (2010, background): “This means that we measure family income as total resources of the household the child lives in. 4This follows the same approach for discounting as in Carneiro and Heckman (2003).”
The Production of Human Capital in Developed Countries: Evidence from 196 Randomized Field Experiments (2016, neutral): “[42] Carneiro, Pedro, and James Heckman.”
Higher education subsidies and heterogeneity: a dynamic analysis (2003, background): “However, this is likely to play a minor role when compared to credit constraints in studying differential effects of policies on the rich and the poor since this risk is common to both types of parents.”
Non-Production Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good Citizenship (2011, background): “2Other studies attempt to estimate production externalities associated with education (see, e.g., Acemoglu and Angrist, 2001, Heckman and Klenow, 1997, Moretti, 2004a, 2004b, Ciccone and Peri, 2006).”
Childhood investments and skill formation (2008, methodology): “The accounting method that Carneiro and Heckman (2003) propose is persuasive since it incorporates the positive synergy effects (learning begets learning) of early investments on the cost of later ones.”
Selection Bias, Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Returns to Education: Evidence from China in 2000 (2003, neutral): “Many empirical analyses reveal that better family background and better family resources are usually associated with better environments that raise ability (Carneiro and Heckman, 2003).”