At the invitation of Prof. Shuaizhang Feng, Prof. James J. Heckman from the University of Chicago, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Economics and the Chair of IESR Advisory Board made a virtual lecture entitled Treatment Effects and the Measurement of Skills in a Prototypical Home Visiting Program. He shared with audience the findings of REACH Program.

Prof. James J. Heckman delivered an online lecture

REACH Programme refers to Rural Education and Child Health Programme， implemented by the team of Prof. Heckman in collaboration with China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) in 2005, with the goal to improve intergenerational social mobility and promote equality.

Prof. Heckman introduced REACH program in three aspects, including the evaluation of the treatment effects in presence of clustered data; proposing and estimating a nonlinear model to recover individual level latent skills and the way they shifted by intervention as well as the sources of the treatment effects. 

Prof. Heckman pointed out that in early life, human capital accumulation takes place in family but not in school. The negligence of investment in human capital in early childhood may frustrate the efforts of investment in public education.

At the end of the lecture, Prof. Heckman and his collaborator Dr. Jin Zhou answered the questions from the audience and encouraged scholars to conduct more research related to early childhood development measurement and intervention in China.