313. Closing Opportunity Gaps Through Early Childhood Skill Development feat. Nate G. Hilger

The significance of early childhood skill development and its influence on long-term income and success differentials is widely recognized today. However, there exists a reluctance within society to allocate substantial resources toward extensive research and development endeavors aimed at innovating and enhancing the effectiveness of this pivotal learning process.

While discussions about educational inequality receive significant attention, it is important to note that formal education constitutes only a small portion of a child's overall time. This places the primary responsibility for child skill development on parents as a private obligation, without providing them adequate training or addressing unrealistic expectations.

Nate G. Hilger is a researcher and writer with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He has worked as a professor of economics at Brown University and as an economist and data scientist in Silicon Valley. His book The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis exposes the true costs of our society’s unrealistic expectations around parenting and lays out a profoundly hopeful blueprint for reform.

Greg and Nate discuss how the limited political influence of parents leads to the lack of funding for child skill development research and how cultural discussion about gender and race in the curriculum distracts from more valuable and universally supported concerns such as financing childcare and extracurricular activities, as well as ensuring access to comprehensive health and mental healthcare for children.

They also talk about how to close the gap between kids of lower and higher-income families by providing access to high-quality early learning environments before kindergarten for everyone.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Should we start investing in parenting?

20:40: I think the reason why we don't have hundreds of large-scale clinical trials, testing what works and what doesn't work in parenting and, more specifically, child development every year is just because we're not choosing to invest in the development of this knowledge. And I think it's a huge mistake we're making as a society. 

Shifting perspective on childhood development

02:39: Once we reframe how we see child development, it starts to become clear that asking parents to organize 90% of this complicated activity on their own, in their spare time, on their dollar, is not a realistic expectation.

A promising direction for progressives to push on

49:31: If we could all come together and agree that kids need more universal support from professionals, like tutors, teachers, counselors, and nurses in their local communities, that would help people reach adulthood ready to stand independently and not rely as much on government programs.

A big shift into the broader portfolio of skills that feed into lifelong success

09:52: Economists tend to fixate on what they can measure and do statistics with. So now economists are coming on board as well to realize the extreme importance of things like social skills, empathy, your ability to speak clearly and persuasively, communication skills, your ability to persevere when you suffer a setback or a rejection, and your ability to control your emotions and your impulses in hot situations. So it's this broader range of skills that we're talking about here in terms of the burden we place on parents and what schools can achieve given that they have such a small share of children's time.

Show Links:Recommended Resources:

• Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau
• Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka 
• Tiebout model

Guest Profile:

• Nate G. Hilger's Website
• Nate G. Hilger on LinkedIn
• Nate G. Hilger on Twitter

His Work:

• The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis
• Articles on Medium