Adverse Childhood Experiences, Poverty, and Inequality: Toward an Understanding of the Connections and the Cures - full text

By John F. Tomer, Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Economics and Finance, Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY 10471, USA

"The purpose of this paper is to look more deeply into the earliest phase of child development, from birth to two or three years of age, in order to understand the implications of this development for human capital theory. Recently, important noneconomic research has revealed the growing prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among young children and the role this plays in impairing their brain functioning and contributing to later age physical and mental ailments. Accordingly, this paper explores the role of ACEs for understanding poverty and the growth of inequality of both income and academic achievement. In doing this, the paper, of course, reviews the important contributions of James Heckman and his colleagues. Further, this paper attempts to build on Heckman’s contributions and to add new human capital understandings related to ACEs and early childhood development. Finally, the paper develops some implications of these understandings for remedies for ACEs...."

http://werdiscussion.worldeconomicsassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/Article-Adverse-Childhood-Experience-Econ-Importance-Causes-Cures.pdf

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