On September 25, 2018, right after a series of outstanding presentations and fruitful discussions at Chicago-Jinan Joint Initiative Workshop (check out more about Heckman's visit here), Professor James Heckman spared some of his time to talk with us about his work, the on-going cooperation with IESR as well as other unexpected yet highly intriguing matters.
James Heckman (September 2018 at Jinan University)
Professor, we are so excited that you agreed to join us for a talk this late afternoon after such an intensive day. It’s already your third time here in Guangzhou visiting IESR – Joint Research Initiative is surely one of the main reasons why you are here today. What’s your plan regarding it?
The University of Chicago and Jinan University agreed to cooperate which means an exchange of students and scholars. We will also have joint seminars – we had one last summer, which was here, and we will have another one next summer. Also, there will be a lot of projects on China as well as joint ventures that will help understand Chinese data, the nature of Chinese labor markets, product markets, the nature of innovation and other interesting aspects of China – at least that’s what I’m hoping for. It’s a fascinating place for many people. However, there has been a misinformation, antagonistic posture towards Chinese trade in the U.S., so, I am interested to see how it will work out. I have a feeling that things won’t be as bad as it sounds initially. I am pretty confident.
How’s your recent research? What have you been working on lately?
Well, recently I have been looking a lot into European welfare state, particularly Scandinavian one, and asking how it compares to the U.S. in reducing inequality and promoting social mobility. And what I find is, even though Scandinavia has much bigger welfare state, much bigger budget for education per student and much less regional disparity (disparity in terms of schooling expenditure or hospitalization, and you name it – almost everything), its universal healthcare, universal social security benefits, universal retirement and even housing programs, the universality itself may be a contributing factor to why the inequality in this country is still so high. Therefore, for me as an American and generally as a researcher in the world it’s very good to be able to compare the U.S. with Denmark because there are so many factors mentioned about American inequality that are absent in Denmark, but still – inequality persist there.
I just started working on this and I hope to do something similar with Chinese data. However, the data here is not as good as European data which is very rich and of high-quality. I have access to everything – earnings, crime, health, education, just everything. I know even where people work, who their school teachers were, and so on. We have very detailed data which allows us to explore the lifecycle of individual’s environment.
What about your research on China? What topics does it cover?
I have been doing a lot of research on China. We are giving the paper tomorrow on Chinese educational policy in the last thirty years. I’m also currently doing a study on Chinese data carrying out interventions to promote the well-being of left-behind children. We are running an experiment that will give lasting supplements for lives of children by providing them both with nutrients and stimulation, and thus substituting for left-behind children where one or both of the parents have left to the East. This way, you can see how these interventions can improve the well-being of children.
And do they?
Well, we have just started analyzing data but it looks very promising. I mean, those kids are still very young, they are only three or four years old, so we are going to follow them until later years. But the answer is – yes, they do, children seem to be improving in a lot of dimensions. That’s something we are actively engaged in, and that’s something I’m very interested in doing in China.
Tim Kautz just gave in a paper that we are doing together – I hope, although I contributed very little to be honest – which is on measuring the effect of incentive and situations on the way we measure cognitive and social skills. Then, there is a study that we now going to talk about tomorrow – Mianzhu [The Longitudinal Study of Children's Development in Mianzhu] – we will look into the structure of how intervention is designed. It’s basically a penal study but it includes the information on left-behind children. These two studies will allow us to understand the importance of family environments, interventions, schooling, and others facts of Chinese families. So, there’s a lot of activity in China.
The Mianzhu project has started in 2016. Has there been much progress since then?
Up until now we have been collecting the data. The second round of data is already coming, so the progress is definitely moving forwards. What has been highly innovative is creating a data center here [Survey Data Center], and also starting interesting analysis on the structure of homelife as well as the relationship between homelife and child outcomes. That really interests me, both in China and the rest of the world.
You have been studying the problem of early childhood education for quite a while now. Could you identify a few key skills that, if developed during the childhood, would dramatically benefit them in their future?
Well, parenting is something that they all need. Encouraging the kid, staying up with the kid, interacting with the kid, supporting the kid, letting the kid fail and try new things – that’s pretty basic, but that’s essential. That, I think, is probably the most important out of all of those findings. It’s a universal constant of good progress.
Many people here in Jinan University, IESR, are working on those or related questions. There is a study done by a guy here that looks at the sample of children in Ecuador, the interventions and how children are succeeding as a result of these parental visits and tempted enrichments in family environment. Right now, he is working in Ecuador, he has data, but we have started talking about comparing the studies. That’s a conversation that has just began today, but we will surely continue.
What’s your view on Chinese government’s role in early childhood education? How could the government support it? Do you have any recommendations in terms of the policymaking?
Well, those policies have been carefully examined in China at the moment. The study I am working on right now is the experiment that grew out of the initiative of Chinese government. China Development Research Foundation in Beijing has a very strong push towards trying to promote a well-being of children who are disadvantaged, and in particular, left-behind children. They are very innovative and that already suggests the understanding of these problems. China doesn’t like to iron its dirty laundry, so it is not going to discuss in the public a lot of these problems, but privately, I think, many Chinese officials understand the need to improve early lives of disadvantaged children.
How do you think, is there something more that can be done?
You can always do more, you can always be better. Right now, people are experimenting and that’s very creative. I wouldn’t push it. I would wait to get good evidence and see what’s happening.
I have no specific complaint or criticism about what China is doing now. On the contrary, I think it’s really great that it’s being done. Look, there is a work that has been collected, a huge sample that we going to talk about tomorrow – interviews of 7 million left-behind children that have been done to find out where those kids come from, where their parents are and how this problem gets generated. Also, people like Shuaizhang Feng [IESR Dean], and particularly him, are looking at the structure of family of left-behind children and collecting data in various creative ways which could lead to very powerful policies to promote social mobility and to reduce inequality.
Now, let’s talk about something that, I believe, many people here are curious about – the Nobel prize in Economics that you received back in 2000. Could you make a prediction who will get the Nobel prize this year?
Oh, it’s very tricky. I can’t say I always agree with every decision that committee makes but, I must admit, there are a lot of worthy candidates this year. For example, Richard Blundell from University College London – he is very natural candidate as he has done a lot of basic work in economics. There is also Paul Milgrom in auctions as auction theory is very important to good economics. Apart from these, I believe, some work by labor economists and econometricians might receive some attention.
I hope the nomination and selection of Nobel laureates would be based more on ideas, but there is also politics behind it. Some people actually campaign for this. I didn’t, but some people do – there is a huge industry of people chasing this prize. But what I have noticed is that journalists are really bad predictors as they don’t know economics as well as those people. Therefore, the people who they may like are often those who are terrible professionally. Of course, I’m not saying that all people taken into consideration are terrible, but I’ve met such people who won their Nobel Prize. Journalists typically have a real trouble understanding more technical issues and research integrity. Science is a very difficult business, it’s very painstaking, and the journalists are usually in such a hurry that they are not taking too much effort to understand all of those painstaking efforts that have gone into some of these projects.
Honestly, I think there was a higher standard that the press held itself to in the past – there was a general much more dignified tone, respecting personal lives and dignity. Sadly, it has led to this kind of violent confrontations of people – they are just screaming, not listening. Dialogue is diminishing in the U.S., I’m sure of that. Even in academic circles it is, to the point that in some places it’s even impossible to talk about social science facts.
For instance?
Here is an example. It’s well known that IQ of black people is lower as a group, it’s lower than the IQ of white people. Like it or not, it’s true – it’s been verified since the beginning of the IQ test. But what happens is, people take this statement and immediately blow it up saying it’s genetic – which it isn’t, and therefore blacks are intrinsically inferior – which it doesn’t say. And even before you can get to the argument, people start screaming and yelling that you are a racist. That’s true in many of these political discussions where you just can’t discuss the problem, and that’s what bothers me.
Probably it’s true all around the world but it has recently gotten much worse in the U.S. People are not seriously considering the structure of the data and thinking that there is going to be an informed convergence to a common truth – that’s what missing. You can take almost any major issue in American social policy and it is that way. People are disputing on certain aspects and completely deny certain kind of scientific evidence, won’t even fund it! For instance, some government research agencies in the U.S. don’t fund work on global warming anymore.
So, there is a lot of intolerance and it obviously affects research. I’m a little sad by it.
Do you have any hope that one day it will change, that some discussion will finally come out, especially in the academic circles?
There is still some discussion among certain people, but it’s getting harder – the boundaries are getting tighter thus inhibiting people from working on certain problems. For example, strict black-white differences in the U.S. I mentioned IQ but there are a lot of differences that have to do with family structure. Yesterday we heard a study presented on the assimilation of Chinese immigrants into American society which suggests that strong Chinese family encouragement of education played a tremendous role to the children – even though parents couldn’t get a good job, their children were educated and this is how the next generation was able to survive [“Institutional Discrimination and Assimilation: Evidence from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882”, study presented by IESR Assistant Professor Bin Xie at the Chicago-Jinan Joint Initiative Workshop 2018]. That, I think, has a relevance for African-American families who are not that supportive in education, and also for Latinos who routinely let their kids drop out of high school without encouraging education.
I believe, we should seriously be able to discuss how cultural choices like that have consequences for the kids. It’s not a racist thing but rather a statement about certain parenting practices which is getting extremely difficult to say. People tend to say that all these behaviors, that might be pathological in some sense, are all induced by poverty and discrimination, which I partly agree with as there is some discrimination behind it, but, at the same time, I’m also sure that there are some real differences in culture, family, schooling, and variety of patterns that have to do with different ethnic and racial groups. However, that’s getting very difficult to discuss and that’s not good.
I suppose, it’s all about acknowledging that cultural differences do exist, and embracing them.
Correct, that’s the idea! You know, we have been talking in the seminar about the exclusion act in the U.S passed against Chinese in 1880s which naturally raised the question of what had happened to the assimilation of the Chinese under these circumstances. But they came out of it! The process was long and slow, but they were able to assimilate much more rapidly than other immigrant groups. I think, it was due to the education and family structure which is part of the identity of being Chinese and actually the whole East Asia. There is a very strong Confucian devotion to the family which seems to be very helpful. You know, it’s no accident that some of the most successful students in American universities now are East Asian.
By the way, do you know about the lawsuit against Harvard for discriminating in the admission of Asians? The main argument for their defense was that all they want is balance, but it’s not a balance, they simply don’t want Asians! And you know how they filter them out? Not on the academic ability but on, what they call, “personality test” [says ironically] – they say that Asians are too quiet, too respectful, and therefore won’t be able to fit in with the rest of students. These are very bazar statements that are very often acted upon and which clearly shows that there is still an ugly racism prevalent.
Despite that, the things have been challenged, and that’s exactly why I think it’s so important to study all these things carefully in order to have a better understanding of why people are different from each other and whether or not some of those differences could be overcome. Or, perhaps, some of them shouldn’t be overcome at all.
So, going back to the need of the dialogue, perhaps you could recommend something to IESR faculty how to keep that dialogue open?
We, the whole Jinan-Chicago group should talk openly on every question, like we did today when we discussed discrimination and the economic history of Chinese exclusion act passed in the U.S.
Also, I think, American technology is of great value to China in terms of social science research. If you look at the people who are now on the IESR faculty, 39 of them, most of them are trained in the U.S. or Europe. They are all very good and trained in those methods, therefore, working with them and bringing in the latest ideas can only help Jinan and Chicago in the long run.
Finally, how do you manage to stay so productive all the time? Perhaps you could share your secret with our students as well as our faculty here at IESR?
For me, this kind of work is not actually work. I’ve done very hard manual labor jobs in the past, and now I see people who work very hard doing jobs that are very demanding both physically and mentally. So, I feel pretty lucky that I’m able to get paid to work on things that I’m actually interested in.
I don’t know if I’m productive, I just enjoy what I’m doing. I really like learning – learning new ideas and also learning from other people. I also like being challenged. To me, it’s like what is known sometimes as “busman’s holiday” – the busman who is driving the bus that he likes driving [laughing]. So, I like driving this particular bus, that is – research. Of course, some of it is terrible, e.g. there are some parts in economic analysis or social analysis that I would simply avoid and then quietly disappear form the room, but in general, I enjoy what I do.
Also, I don’t have some kind of quota I should publish every month, or every year. I publish a fair number of papers, and they all come out of the research related to the things I was originally interested in – the papers are just the consequence of what I have been doing. It’s a very great satisfaction to start working on a problem that is new and nobody has ever worked on before, or if they had, they failed. and to look at it in many different ways, challenge yourself and then slowly (sometimes quickly) find the way to approach it… That moment when something that seems impossible starts to look possible, when you hammer your way at it and it finally falls in line – that’s a very gratifying feeling. It’s not money, not some honor and it’s not an external recognition.
But there is also another side to it. I feel like in a lot of areas (which is probably a consequence of getting older) many things are very similar to older ideas – ideas that got lost or have been plagiarized – I’m not sure which and I don’t really care, but what I see though, is the essence of déjà vu. Of course, there are some genuine advances, not just recycling of old ideas, which I look forward to, but I just find it little sad that people can’t remember what was done by others. I think, economics should be an accumulative science but for a lot of people – it isn’t. For them, economics is like a rediscovery, a brand-new world [sarcasm]. Unlike other fields, there is less appreciation of this body of work done before which dramatically slows the progress of the subject. For example, in physics, we don’t throw away Maxwell equations or Newton – all we do is say that now we have a much deeper understanding, but the basic principles are still there. It’s an accumulative quality but in economics it seems to be the opposite – people are just starting all over again as if they’ve forgotten everything.
But, in general, as I get older, I feel very happy that I can work on what I do. I like learning new things – new cultures, new music, new challenges, even learning some new mathematics and various new activities – things that I haven’t heard of, or didn’t know much about. For instance, China is very curious to me. As an American, I see it somehow mysterious at times in a way that I don’t fully understand it. Americans are very direct and blunt while Chinese are very reserved. Many East Asians are very inscrutable and polite but Americans are not – they are very aggressive in the sense they speak their feelings. Sometimes, it’s hard to know Chinese feelings, where exactly do they stand. But that’s interesting too. Although there are some differences, but that also means that there is some sort of opportunity.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
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Our interview time has come to an end even before we could realize it. Nonetheless, the experience and deep insight that James Heckman had shared with us on a variety of topics, we believe, could be of significant value to all of us – both to economists and those who find themselves immersed into academia in general.
Ceremony honoring Professor James Heckman as the Chair of IESR Advisory Board
James J. Heckman is a 2000 Nobel Laureate in Economics and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development (CEHD) and Co-Director of Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO) at the University of Chicago. Professor Heckman has worked closely with IESR since its launch in late 2015 and now serves as Chair of the IESR Advisory Board.
