The American Family in Black and White: A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality

James Heckman

No 16841, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: J15 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03
Note: CH ED
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Published as “The American Family in Black & White: A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality,” Daedalus , 140 (2):70–89. (2011).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16841.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The American Family in Black and White: A Post-Racial Strategy for Improving Skills to Promote Equality (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16841

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16841

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().