The Importance of Early Child Development - A Challenge for America as well as the Netherlands

James Heckman (1944) is an American economist and Nobel laureate. In recent years his research has focused on human development and lifecycle skill formation, with a special emphasis on the economics of early childhood education.  Here is an abstract of a recent article by him at the National Bureau of Economic Research. 
 
In contemporary America, racial gaps in achievement are primarily due to gaps in skills. Skill gaps emerge early before children enter school. Families are major producers of those skills. Inequality in performance in school is strongly linked to inequality in family environments. Schools do little to reduce or enlarge the gaps in skills that are present when children enter school. Parenting matters, and the true measure of child advantage and disadvantage is the quality of parenting received. A growing fraction of American children across all race and ethnic groups is being raised in dysfunctional families. Investment in the early lives of children in disadvantaged families will help close achievement gaps. America currently relies too much on schools and adolescent remediation strategies to solve problems that start in the preschool years. Prevention is likely to be more cost-effective than remediation. Voluntary, culturally sensitive support for parenting is a politically and economically palatable strategy that addresses problems common to all racial and ethnic groups. 
 
Your editor believes that putting in Netherlands or Dutch where Heckman has noted America or American gives an accurate impression of the situation here in the Netherlands. It would also apply equally to the UK or French situation - in fact, a lot of West European countries.
 
This year's 2011 Priority Points has a note on the importance of stimulating skills for the future - and emphasizes how essential it is that language and cognitive skills must be in place before schooling begins at the primary level. That point was born by Heckman's work.
 
A visit to Heckman's website is a learning experience: http://www.heckmanequation.org/
 
Or at least take some time to look through this slide presentation:  
http://www.heckmanequation.org/system/files/ROI-Pritzker_DISPLAY_2010-12-16a_cji.pdf