LAUSR

Biologists and social scientists have some ideas, thanks to a growing body of empirical evidence from long-term research on cohorts of people recruited at birth and studied regularly over decades, with some participants now in their seventies [ ]Nobel-prizewinning economist James Heckman was keen to understand why participants in some Head Start programmes - launched in the 1960s to provide educational and health support for US children from low-income families - fared better in education and employment later in life, even though their early gains in test scores faded with time Even after controlling for factors such as family socio-economic status, worse self-control in childhood predicted a plethora of adverse outcomes: poorer physical health in the early thirties;lower social status and wealth;and increased risks of drug and alcohol use and being convicted of a crime