Intervention during childhood to promote human capital development has the potential to prevent a cascade of negative outcomes, including poor health, criminal behavior, and overreliance on government services in the future (Anderson et al., 2003; Dodge, 2009; O’Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009; Eckenrode et al., 2010; Heckman et al., 2010; Garner et al., 2011). Evidence of this has made strategies for investing in youth a policy priority in the United States and globally (Belfield et al., 2006; Heckman, 2006; Barnett & Masse, 2007; America’s Promise Alliance, 2013; Obama, 2013). A challenge is that interventions to promote human capital development are complex and expensive and “average treatment effects” are often modest. One reason for modest treatment effects is that intervention response varies across subpopulations (Imbens & Angrist, 1994; Kraemer, et al., 2002, Bloom & Michalopoulos, 2013). Opportunities to maximize the fit between people and programs are therefore of keen interest in efforts to bolster intervention impacts (Hinshaw, 2002; Duncan & Vandell, 2012). Research is needed to uncover measureable characteristics of individuals that identify them as likely to respond more or less positively to intervention.
