Impact of poverty on cognitive development

I found an old paper beneath a pile of reprints. We  read it and then distributed the paper to our mind-brain consortium. What an eye opener. All of us agreed that it should be shared with as many people as possible, especially policy makers, politicians, educators. The author, an economist, James J. Heckman wrote this perspective paper Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children in Science 30 June 2006. In it he marshals all kinds of evidence showing the devastation of poverty on cognitive development. The most important feature of the paper is a figure showing the dramatic effect of preschool programs in terms of return on human capital development (especially when compared to the meager effects of much later job training. From a business investment perspective investing in preschool programs should be irresistible. Unfortunately many policy decisions are made no on the basis of evidence or logic but rather short term politics. If you get a chance please look at this article along with a subsequent article by the same author and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.