James J. Heckman

New York Times columnist David Brooks has chosen to discuss Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? by James J. Heckman, Alan B. Krueger on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject – Neuroscience, saying that:



“…Heckman is an economist who looks at the first few years of life. It turns out that already at age four, you can predict with about 77 per cent accuracy who is going to graduate from high school. He focuses on non-cognitive skills like personality which, unlike cognitive skills such as IQ, are hard to measure. For example, people who get high school equivalency degrees: they get test results that are just as high as people with actual high school degrees, but they do much worse in life. His main point is that having things like persistence and self-control are really important. But where do these things come from?..."



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david-brooks… (meer)