Building A Better Workforce

Building a Better Workforce, a conference held in the MassMutual Room of the Basketball Hall of Fame in November, attracted 200 participants from the region's business, educaation and public policy communities and addressed the link between educational attainment - from pre-kindergarten through college and adult education - and a healthy local economy.

Nobel Laureate Dr. James Heckman, from the Center of Economic Research at the University of Chicago, spoke to attendees about the importance of investing in early education. Dr. Heckman cited a long-running study indicating that children who spent 2 ¹/₂ hours a day in pre-school programs and whose families received home visits realized lifelong benefits. These participants had increase IQs, were more likely to graduate high school, and experienced greater wage earning by age 40.

View some of the presentation videos online at www.wgby.org/workforce.