On September 30, 2019, Professor James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate in economics and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, received Chinese Government Friendship Award, the highest honor and recognition China grants to foreign experts for their contribution to the country’s social and economic development.  

James J. Heckman at the Ceremony of the Chinese Government Friendship Award 2019

Professor Heckman has been collaborating with the Institute for Economic and Social Research (IESR) at Jinan University closely since its inception in late 2015. His collaborative research with Shuaizhang Feng, Dean of IESR, based on large-scale surveys, holds promise in understanding development hurdles for Chinese children, particularly for the estimated 60 million “left-behind” children whose absent parents have migrated to cities for work.

As a honorary professor and the chairman of its advisory committee, Professor Heckman has been involved in numerous collaborative activities with IESR. The Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD) at the University Chicago, which Heckman directs, has been co-organizing the annual Guangzhou HCEO Summer School on Socioeconomic Inequality with IESR since 2016. In 2018, the two sides formally launched the Chicago-Jinan Joint Initiative, which serves as a research home for both IESR and CEHD students and faculty, as well as for visiting scholars from a broad array of guest institutions.

“Our joint research with Professor Heckman will not only contribute to general knowledge, but also help China to better cope with its pressing practical challenges”, noted Feng. In Mianzhu, Sichuan Province, the researchers have been collecting data on nearly 10,000 school children in the last two years, with the third round planned for this November. This data will allow them to study how to accurately measure the traits, skills, and preferences of children that determine important life outcomes. Also, as half of the students studied are left-behind children, the project will shed light on how their cognitive and non-cognitive developments have been affected by parental absence, and will seek to find solutions to the problem.

In his speech at the award ceremony in front of Vice Premier Liu He and all other Friendship awardees, James Heckman urged the Chinese government to pursue “a more coherent and bold human capital development strategy”, as he believes that “If the enormous potential of rural Chinese children is fully developed, they will become a strong driving force for China's economic and social progress.”