James Heckman ’65 is a Nobel laureate and Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he also directs the Center for the Economics of Human Development. His research, including four books and over 300 publications, has profoundly impacted the understanding of human development and capital. But back in 1961, he was a CC first-year student from the Denver suburbs setting foot in Reinitz Ross and Bill Hochman’s intro seminar.
Heckman majored in Mathematics but describes being deeply impacted by Classics, History, and Philosophy.
“I remember reading Plato’s Republic in Jane Cauvel’s course on philosophy. It absorbed my thoughts and being for months and raised so many valuable questions. CC classes opened me up to the canon of Western and Classical literature. It was exhilarating, and the instructors were deeply engaged with ideas and with challenging a group of ignorant but enthusiastic students with many new ideas.”
He also recalls CC’s annual symposia, which brought in world-class speakers for lectures around themes such as “Science and Society” and “World War II and Its Aftermath.” After CC, Heckman was inspired to study human capital by the works of Jacob Mincer, the father of modern labor economics, whom he studied under at Columbia University.
“CC classes opened me up to the canon of Western and Classical literature. It was exhilarating, and the instructors were deeply engaged with ideas and with challenging a group of ignorant but enthusiastic students with many new ideas.”
James Heckman ’65
Heckman’s research and methods have impacted fields from labor markets to microeconomics, but they’ve made perhaps the deepest impact on society’s understanding of early childhood education.
“The early education field is rich with ideas, but weak in formal methodology and statistics practice,” he reflects. Heckman worked with researcher David Weikart to organize and interpret data from the pioneering Perry Preschool Project, which has followed outcomes from a preschool cohort for over 50 years. He developed the Heckman Curve, which demonstrates that the earlier a society invests in education, the greater the returns.
“Showing that the tax distortion adjusted annual rate of return to this iconic program was over ten percent per annum strengthened the case for devoting societal resources to early education,” he shares. “These facts were not known when I entered the field, nor were the dynamic models of skill formation we crafted out there. We launched the study of early childhood in the field of economics, and it’s a rich and thriving subject.”
Another enduring contribution is the Heckman Correction, a two-step statistical technique that addresses sample selection bias. It is widely used across labor economics and social sciences and earned Heckman the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 2000.
The award that meant the most to Heckman? Being awarded tenure at the University of Chicago, where he’s continued to teach and interact with world-class scholars for over 51 years.
“I hope that my children and grandchildren succeed. I also hope to leave behind a legacy of theoretically motivated, empirically rigorous work in economics. I also hope that I can contribute to the knowledge of how to develop and measure the skills that promote human flourishing for all.”