The US vs Denmark: Is the Scandinavian model best for social mobility?
Research explores intergenerational mobility in the US and Denmark, and suggests a hybrid of the two models might be best.
James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago and the founding director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development. Heckman is actively engaged in conducting and guiding empirical and theoretical research on skill development, inequality, and social mobility and continues his work on the econometrics of policy evaluation and the choice theoretic foundations of causal inference. Heckman has won the numerous prizes for his work, including the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000, the John Bates Clark Medal in 1983, the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic in 2008, the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society in 2014, and the Dan David Prize in 2016. He has published more than 300 articles and 9 books. This work has influenced both the scholarly literature and public policy.