A simple model of human capability formation predicts that investments at different developmental stages of childhood matter differently for later-life outcomes (Heckman, 2007; Almond and Currie, 2011). Dynamic complementarities and self-productivity in the process of skill-formation call for (public) interventions to help economically disadvantaged children and to mitigate income, health, and environmental shocks experienced in childhood which many studies found to matter for individuals’ well-being later in life (e.g., Barker, 1990; Almond 2006; Cutler, Miller and Norton, 2007; Maccini and Yang, 2009). While most studies focus on evaluating recent interventions, the increase in availability of high quality micro level historical data, such as the historical full count data of the US Census, sparked the interest of economic historians in this topic (e.g., Bleakley, 2007; Aaronson and Mazumder, 2011; Feyrer et al., 2016). The participants of this session present and discuss recent papers of economic historians working on this topic.