Choose your parents wisely

“The money ... would be better spent on giving children a savings account.”

If that sounds consistent with the prejudices of the famously free market oriented Chicago School of economics - Heckman isn’t preaching despair or “benign neglect”.

Though we can’t control family environments like we can schools, Heckman thinks policy can improve early childhood development. And in early childhood, just a little improvement goes a long way.

Since even before President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs of the mid 1960s, America has intervened in poor families with special education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement. The programs increase IQ though these effects fade over time. Even so the programs have enhanced kids “non-cognitive” skills giving them enduring lifelong advantages.

Turns out that in crime infested America, good early childhood enrichment pays for itself from lower crime rates alone, leaving aside much better health, education, family stability, wage and productivity outcomes. By contrast with additional school spending, one dollar spent in well directed early intervention generates eight in improved future outcomes - and that’s ignoring non-economic “social” gains.

So as Eddie McGuire’s success helps poor kids dream big dreams, we should celebrate Australian governments’ renewed support of the role of early childhood development in making Australia a richer, fairer place.

Now, amid all the enthusiasm (or was that lip-service?) for program accountability, and over three decades after it was first done in the US, what about ensuring that the interventions are properly set up with randomised trials so we can measure their results?

That way policy skill could beget skill - rather than failure begetting failure.

The truth - if that’s what Heckman’s telling us - is sometimes confronting. But it’s also liberating. To paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer, whether or not it gives us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, it might give us courage to change the things we can - by giving us the wisdom to know the difference.