Human Capital Conference 2026

Investing Early and Well

Orazio Attanasio, Professor at Yale University, opened the conference by showing that the first years of life are a critical window for children's development. He distinguished between cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, and health, and found that parental investment between ages two and four produces the largest gains in children's learning abilities. He also showed that early support can help children who start at a disadvantage to catch up, with direct implications for reducing inequality.

Petra Todd, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, placed these findings in a longer perspective. Human capital, she reminded the audience, goes well beyond school grades. It includes personality, resilience, health, and the ability to adapt. She also raised a concern for the future: if children rely on AI tools too early, they may never develop the core skills that school is designed to build. Sergi Quintana, Postdoctoral Researcher at Rockwool Foundation Berlin, added that the quality of pre-school teachers can do more for a child's development than giving parents more time or money at the same cost. Investing in good early educators is one of the most effective uses of public funds.

Families, Institutions, and Inequality

Several presentations examined how family background and institutional rules shape children's futures. Jamie Hentall MacCuish, Assistant Professor at HEC Paris, showed that better-educated parents spend more time with their children and are more effective at turning that time into real developmental gains. Children from less-educated households start at a disadvantage that tends to carry forward across generations. Martin Garcia Vazquez, Assistant Professor at Washington University, found that requiring more teachers per child in childcare raises the price of paid childcare, especially for lower quality centers. Because of the increase in price, some families reduce the use of childcare, leaving their children in typically lower-quality informal childcare arrangements and slowing down their cognitive development. However, because the price of lower quality arrangements is more distorted, the price differential between higher and lower-quality childcare narrows and this results in some families buying higher-quality childcare, benefiting children's cognitive skills. This induces interesting distributional effects, and the overall effects on children's skills of tighter regulations turns out to be positive.

Inequality ran through the whole programme. Marc Gurgand, Associate Researcher at Paris School of Economics, demonstrated that sending disadvantaged students to boarding schools can improve their results, not just through better teaching, but by raising their self-confidence. Ellen Greaves, Lecturer at the University of Exeter, revealed that in England, assigning pupils to schools based on where they live tends to favour wealthier families, who can afford to move into the catchment areas of the best schools. Simulations suggest that reserving a share of places for poorer pupils would help, but as early experiments showed, such reforms quickly face strong opposition. Frédéric Tallet, Statisticien-Economist at the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche highlighted that providing comprehensive information on success rate and employment indicators of higher education programs can help mitigate inequalities in access.

Inequality ran through the whole programme

Marc Gurgand, Associate Researcher at Paris School of Economics, demonstrated that sending disadvantaged students to boarding schools can improve their results, not just through better teaching, but by raising their self-confidence. Ellen Greaves, Lecturer at the University of Exeter, revealed that in England, assigning pupils to schools based on where they live tends to favour wealthier families, who can afford to move into the catchment areas of the best schools. Simulations suggest that reserving a share of places for poorer pupils would help, but as early experiments showed, such reforms quickly face strong opposition. Frédéric Tallet, Statisticien-Economist at the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche highlighted that providing comprehensive information on success rate and employment indicators of higher education programs can help mitigate inequalities in access.

Designing Better Schools and Matching Systems

Another striking message of the conference was that the rules used to distribute school places and assign teachers matter as much as the quality of schools themselves. Christopher Campos, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, showed that the way a school choice system is set up shapes who takes part, often as much as school quality does. Access gaps are partly a design problem. Julien Combe, Professor at CREST - Ecole polytechnique, showed that a smarter system for assigning teachers to schools in France could reduce the gap between well-staffed and under-staffed institutions, without any loss in overall quality.

On peer effects, Mariana Laverde, Assistant Professor at Boston College, found that classmates do influence each other's results, but that school quality matters far more. Policies that focus on improving schools directly will do better than those built around managing who studies with whom.

Digital Platforms and the Future of Education

Chris Neilson, Professor at Yale University, presented the experience of Chile, which since 2016 has run a single national platform for school admissions. Families can list as many schools as they want, and an algorithm assigns places in a fair and transparent way. Crucially, families can see in real time how likely they are to get into each school. This has helped lower-income families access schools that were previously out of reach. Neilson argued that AI-powered tools could extend these benefits further by giving every family personalized guidance. The key, he stressed, is to keep the rules of allocation separate from the tool that carries them out, and to make sure technology supports learning rather than replacing the effort it requires.

When Schools Fail: Closing, Reallocating, and the Limits of Reform

The conference ended with one of the hardest questions in education policy: what should be done when a school consistently lets its pupils down? Parag Pathak, Professor at the MIT, tackled this directly. Using simulations of school closures and pupil reassignment, he examined when closing the worst-performing schools actually helps children. The answer was cautiously positive: moving pupils to better schools can lead to real improvements in their results. But Pathak was clear that closing a school is never painless. It disrupts children, families, and communities, and that disruption is a central part of the problem that any reform must address.

His presentation brought together the main threads of the conference. Good design matters. Every reform involves trade-offs. And turning solid research into real policy remains, above all, a political challenge.

This translation is provided for informational purposes only. It has not been verified or approved by the author of the original content. In the event of any discrepancy, the original French version shall prevail.

Useful links : 

• TSE Human Capital Center
• 1st Human Capital Conference

Published in TSE Reflect July 2026