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Investing in the future for our children’s well-being
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And I am your chance
Whatever will come, will come from me
Tomorrow is won by winning me
Whatever I am, you taught me to be
I am your hope
I am your chance
I am your child
—“I Am Your Child”; Peter, Paul and Mary, 1973 (Manilow and Panzer)
Well I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him, tell where are you going
And I don’t know who I am but you know life is for learning
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
—“Woodstock”; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1970 (Joni Mitchell)
I am afraid we are losing the debate over investing in our children’s future. Rather than give up, the important question then is who do we need to convince, or rather, who isn’t currently reached by our more typical compassionate appeals and how do we reach them? I wonder if a different approach can succeed and get us to the proverbial garden — perhaps a human capital argument.
Let’s try economics. I know most of us are not experts on economics (if we were, we would be dermatologists). But perhaps if we can win in the marketplace, we can gather enough strength to win a children’s agenda at the ballot box. Because we must win tomorrow and win for children and advance an agenda that ensures the well-being of all children. The argument starts at the very beginning of life with nurturance and education.
William T. Gerson
Improvement of children’s well-being
The first several years of a child’s life are crucial to ensuring their future well-being. The lesson we must learn from current research and teach to others is that the social and emotional competencies of our children, beyond mere IQ, are of fundamental importance to lifetime success. These skills and motivations are learned in the very beginning of life. Our current preoccupation with cognitive testing grossly distorts the debate and seriously underestimates the importance of investing early in human capital. Unfortunately, our national political climate in concert with economic inequality has left American children dependent on the education level of their parents, rather than their own, as the determinant of future income. The Mincer equation has been turned on its head.
What is the Mincer equation? It is a human capital earnings function defined in the 1950s by Jacob Mincer, a father of modern labor economics. As a non-economist, I will spare you the mathematical equation and summarize the Mincer equation as a function of years of education and years of experience and let you know that the formula explains how earnings are related to educational attainment and has been repeatedly validated. Crucially, the expansion and refinement of the human capital argument to highlight the growing evidence of the importance of very early childhood to social, economic and political “well-being” has led a fellow Chicago economist and Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman to declare that “best evidence supports the policy prescription: Invest in the very young.”
Success of future generations
Human capital is now a leading public policy theme often looked upon as a solution to income disparity, unemployment and economic growth, but it has not been successfully translated from the economic literature to a pediatric policy initiative. Given the growing awareness that early childhood is a critical element in achieving intelligent, well-adjusted and productive adults, if you seek economic success you must invest in the well-being of our youth. Validated and clear. Can it be exploited to persuade a body politic to change its ways?
I think it can. But we have much to overcome.
The corrupting influence of money has driven the policies that separate us rather than bring us together. We believe in our nation as a triumphant middle-class society and most crucially one of class mobility, but the reality is that we trail much of the First World in these categories. We allow our children to be poorly fed, poorly educated and poorly housed. We seemingly prefer to ensure their exposure to poverty, violence and despair. We hear talk of family values, but we walk away from opportunities to instill the skills to succeed in future generations and lose the chance to model, let alone affirm and renew a family and community-based social contract with our children.
By choice, we seemingly define success by the ability to opt out of shared living space and experience. We ignore our leading status in the developed world in the rate of childhood poverty and incarceration. Many of us define poverty as a character flaw. What we can avoid seeing we do well; witness the plight of our Native Americans to whose care and well-being we hold not only a moral but also a legal obligation. Do not even mention our lowly comparative status on equality of health care access, life expectancy and measures of well-being.
Focus on children’s futures
If we cared for our children’s future, we would not let the percentage of our federal budget going to older Americans grow rapidly and our commitments to the young dwindle. Nor would we allow our current economy to stagnate, youth employment to deteriorate and the real cost of higher education grow exponentially.
But most importantly, if we not only truly cared about all our children in a compassionate sense but also saw in our young the future vibrancy of our nation’s character and soul, we would dedicate our riches more equitably to them — particularly in the first years of their lives. And we would not fail in bringing this debate successfully forward. Life is for learning, and they are our children and they are our hope and they should bloom in our shared garden.
Disclosure: Gerson reports no relevant financial disclosures.