The United States invests heavily in education and workforce development, yet skill gaps persist and inequality deepens. An important yet underexamined driver of skill formation is families and parenting.

Dr. Ariel Kalil, Daniel Levin Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, joins the Tuck Centers for BGS, Health Care, and the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth for this winter’s Wicked Problems Series program: “The High Cost of Low Skills: The Role of Parenting in Building a Strong and Prosperous Nation.” Dr. Kalil will examine the social and economic implications of parenting, focusing on its intergenerational effects on human capital and opportunities. This community briefing and Q&A will explore why traditional education-focused reforms often fall short, how common misconceptions hinder progress, and what we know and still don’t know about effective ways to support parents and strengthen early skill formation, underscoring the collective stake of taking families and parenting seriously in policy and research.

Ariel Kalil is the Daniel Levin Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab and the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. Her research draws on behavioral economics and neuroscience to experimentally test interventions aimed at supporting parenting and child development.

She is co-author (with Susan E. Mayer) of the forthcoming book Raising Futures: How Parents Build the Skills That Shape America's Prosperity and co-creator of Chat2Learn, an AI-powered tool fostering skill-building parent-child conversations.

To RSVP and receive live program updates, click here: https://apps.tuck.dartmouth.edu/dart/groucho/tuck_public_event.show_event?p_event_id=38061