Heckman Curve

Heckman drew the curve in a 2006 paper in Science from the logic that skills beget skills: capacities built early make later learning cheaper, so money spent at three buys more than money spent at thirty. It became a standard argument for pre-school spending. Rea and Burton tested it in 2020 against a large set of programme cost-benefit estimates and found no sign that earlier programmes paid better.

In practice

• A government moves money from adult retraining to early childhood on the strength of the curve, when its own evaluations show a retraining scheme returning more than any of its pre-school programmes.
• A parent spends freely on toddler enrichment classes on the principle that early spending compounds, then balks at the teenage tutoring that turns out to matter.

Possible explanations

The explanation offered is that skills beget skills, so capacities built early make later learning cheaper and raise the return on everything spent afterwards.

In its favour

The underlying claim about complementarity has support, and several early-childhood programmes with long follow-ups show large returns.

Against it

Rea and Burton found no consistent decline with age across a large set of programme evaluations, and Heckman replied that cost-benefit ratios of dissimilar programmes do not measure the curve, which leaves it well argued and not demonstrated.

Standing

Heckman replied that cost-benefit ratios of dissimilar programmes do not measure the curve, which concerns returns to the same investment at different ages. The theory is widely accepted; the empirical curve has not been demonstrated. Compare the fade-out effect.

Subject

Learning & Education

Essay

Theories of teaching, and what schools are for