ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an analysis of economic and sociological descriptions of the social capital of the ideal corporate family. It examines the global advocacy of early childhood education as a means of giving children the right social skills for economic success. The chapter focuses on the work of Nobel Prize winning economist and member of the Chicago School of Economics, James Heckman. Using the language of economics, Heckman advocates greater investment in preschool education to develop soft skills. The global diffusion of Heckman's ideas about social capital and preschool has influenced policy statements by the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The chapter is based on free market economics and tries to demonstrate the negative effects of government intervention in the economics of the family. The families with a large number of children may represent a lack of social capital because of the dilution of adult attention to the child.
