A seminar on child development promoting common prosperity is held on May 15 at Xiangfudang in Xitang town, Jiashan county, Jiaxing, Zhejiang province. [Photo/tianmunews.com]

The seminar on child development promoting common prosperity was held on May 15 at Xiangfudang in Xitang town, Jiashan county, Jiaxing, Zhejiang province.

James J. Heckman, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Economics, economist at the University of Chicago and director of the Center for Human Development Studies at the University of Chicago, attended the event.

The "Heckman curve" is a curve showing the relationship between education investment returns and age proposed by professor Heckman. It shows that investment in children aged three and under yields the highest return, and the older the child, the lower the return on education investment.

"By focusing on skills development from childhood, interventions involving human capital can help solve many of the challenges we face in achieving coordinated urban-rural development and promoting common prosperity," said professor Heckman.

For nearly a decade, professor Heckman and other scholars have collaborated with the China Development Research Foundation on an early childhood parenting intervention project in China to promote the development of vulnerable children.

The rural early education project provides once-a-week guidance for children and families in underdeveloped rural areas. The project aims to promote cognitive, linguistic, social and health development by improving the quality of interactions between rural children and their caregivers. The program now covers 19 counties and districts in 10 provinces, benefiting 33,000 children.

"Child development is an area that should be focused on in the study of common prosperity, and investing in early childhood education is a cost-effective strategy to promote economic growth," said Fan Xiaohui, director of the Yangtze River Delta Smart Oasis Innovation Center of Zhejiang University.