Capabilities and Skills

School Readiness and Community-Based Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centres in Low-Income Communities: Examining The Case of Gugulethu, Western Cape Province, South Africa

“…This contrasts with the consensus in the sector that basic child development begins during early learning long before school-going age. Heckman and Corbin (2016) have argued that it is not economically and socially efficient for societies to wait until children show signs of incompetence before intervening. Moreover, the Heckman curve shows that the rate of return on public investment in human capital, including early education, diminishes with age (Rea & Burton, 2020).…”

“…Moreover, the Heckman curve shows that the rate of return on public investment in human capital, including early education, diminishes with age (Rea & Burton, 2020). It has even been proposed that skills gaps in adulthood develop between advantaged and disadvantaged children before they start schooling (Heckman & Corbin, 2016). Hence, the challenges of SRP ought to be addressed in preschool, not in primary school.…”

“…The process of capital formation is governed by a multi-stage technology within which some stages, called sensitive stages, are considered more effective in producing specific capabilities. It is highly recommended that specific skills be cultivated during the sensitive period, as skills in one period are prerequisites for the next stage (Heckman, 2007;Heckman & Corbin, 2016). The process of learning is interlinked so that capabilities produced in one stage enhance capabilities attained at later stages.…”

Social Mobility in Developing Countries

“…Another important issue highlighted by the work of James Heckman and his co-authors is that the implicit assumption of ability as innate is likely to be misleading. A large literature has developed in the last few decades that shows that ability is largely determined by the early-life environment, including mother's health when a child is in utero and early-life nutrition (Heckman and Corbin 2016;.³¹ An implication of this evidence is that most of the estimates of correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive ability of parents and children available in the current literature are likely to be biased upward, as they are measured not at birth, but later in life. This also implies that when we set Corr(ε i ,ζ i ) = 0.40, the resulting estimate of IGRC should be considered as a lower bound, both because the ability correlation is likely to be overestimated, and because the IGRC estimate will be biased downward because of measurement error.…”

Improving the Well-Being of Adolescent Girls in Developing Countries

“…Adolescence is also a time in which girls face a multitude of hazards ranging from school dropout, child marriage, teen pregnancy, physical and mental health problems, and gender based violence (Baird et al, 2016). Young people's capabilities and functioning during this period not only have immediate consequences to their own lives (Heckman and Corbin 2016), but also longer-term effects on their offspring and communities at large (Lloyd and Young 2009;Duflo 2012). Interventions that help adolescent girls reach their full potential by increasing their education, improving their skills, and delaying childbearing and marriage have the potential to create a virtuous cycle that improves health, especially child health, and women's empowerment -ultimately leading to higher economic growth (Canning, Raja, and Yazbeck, 2015).…”