摘要：I am very happy to introduce this issue of Focus, which is centered on the theme of building human capital for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, one of IRP’s major research themes for the next two years (see http://www.irp.wisc.edu/research/ humancapital.htm). Now almost four years after the end of the Great Recession, hiring and job quality are both far from a full recovery, especially for low-skill younger workers. Because we believe that the answer to poverty for non-disabled adults and their children lies in a good steady job with decent wages and long-term prospects for advancement, we are especially interested in how to improve job market outcomes for poor youth and adults. We lead off with a summary of the Robert J. Lampman Memorial Lecture given by James Heckman last spring. James discusses personality psychology, a new point of contact between the fields of economics and psychology. He argues that individual personality traits, sometimes called “soft skills,” are predictors of success in many areas of economic and social life, including earnings outcomes. Individual variation in these skills is an important source of inequality. James details the ways that economists can both take from and contribute to personality psychology in order to better examine and address the sources of poverty
