For subscribers
Put the 'human' back into human capital
Thinking of human capital in income and productivity terms is reductive. We need a more holistic approach.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL
Ravi Chidambaram and Parag Khanna For The Straits Times
Follow topic:
As technological change disrupts entire industries and inequality threatens political stability, attention has shifted towards the question of how to upskill the labour force for higher productivity. But productivity is only one piece in the much larger puzzle of human capital.
Human capital is a deeply potent concept, one of those rare ideas so powerful that it becomes a force in its own right. Formally, the term was developed by the late Nobel laureate Gary Becker in his efforts to quantify the value of secondary education in America's post-World War II decades.
