Abstract
The role played by human capital in the historical process of economic development is an important issue in cliometrics. This chapter traces the history of the human capital concept and underlines that it has undergone criticism since its origins. Among these criticisms, we stress that the human capital research program was plagued with measurement difficulties. This issue has recently fostered a sense of strong reluctance toward the concept. Portraying a growing debate in cliometrics – the role of human capital in the first stage of the industrialization process in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Western Europe – we emphasize that recent cliometric contributions on the issue open up stimulating lines of thought about what human capital is and how it can adequately be measured.
Notes
- 1.
For an exhaustive analysis of the authors who treated human beings as capital, see Kiker (1966).
- 2.
Becker also mentions Mill and Marshall’s legacy.
- 3.
Solow’s contribution of 1957 was a landmark in the development of growth accounting.
- 4.
The residual was not the only puzzle that led Schultz to build the foundations of human capital theory. We must also cite the Leontief paradox (see Schultz 1972a). But the residual appears to be by far the most decisive element in the development of human capital theory.
- 5.
Schultz pays explicit tribute to Becker’s theoretical model of investment in human capital, developed in the 1960s. See, for instance, Schultz, 1961b, p. 1037; at about the same time he also wrote: “I have placed the paper by Gary S. Becker first because it gives the reader an overview of the pervasiveness of human capital and because it reveals many vistas awaiting to be explored” (Schultz, 1962, p. 2).
- 6.
For a critical review of the meanings associated with methodological individualism, as well as its contradictions, see Hodgson (2007).
- 7.
“Becker and Mincer were not engaged in making aggregative estimates of the contribution of education to income growth” (Bowman, 1964, 453).
- 8.
As underlined by Teixeira (2005, p. 137): “A peculiar aspect was that the initial development was isolated and only after Schultz saw Mincer’s dissertation and decided to invite him to Chicago for a post-doctoral fellowship (1957–1958), they interacted more closely. Then, they became aware of the closeness of their research and its unplanned complementarity”. See also Biddle and Holden (2016).
- 9.
Schultz’s presidential address to the American Economic Association in 1960 is seen as one of the fundamental moments in the emerging theory of human capital (see, for instance, Teixeira 2000).
- 10.
- 11.
Eric Hanushek significantly contributed to the development of the so-called approaches of the “quality of education.” His early work on the subject began in 1970. Regarding the role of the quality of education in the contribution of human capital to growth, see, for instance, Hanushek and Kimko (2000), Jamison et al. (2007), or Hanushek and Woessmann (2008, 2011, 2012).
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Le Chapelain, C. (2019). Cliometrics and the Concept of Human Capital. In: Diebolt, C., Haupert, M. (eds) Handbook of Cliometrics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40458-0_45-2
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