Motivating Learning and the Development of Human Capital

This paper revisits Schultz's concept of human capital. In both the South and the North the concept has been incorporated uncritically into policy discourses. The academic community has been less critical. Its theoretical, empirical and methodological critiques have generated at least two responses from the economists. The first is the extension and refinement of the conceptual and methodological frameworks of human capital. The second maintains the focus on the monetary returns and draws attention to the enduring unexplained variance of differences in lifetime earnings and the 'behavioural' factors, besides education, that may account for it. The basic proposition of human capital theory, that people invest in themselves through education, takes human motivation for granted. The author suggests that questions of motivation and learning are central to the concept of human capital. Not only is learning motivated, but learning can itself be motivating. A review of studies of the motives for learning in education and work and the motivational effects of learning in education and work highlights the goals, besides the economic, that motivate human endeavour. Such studies, many informed by psychological and education perspectives, deserve more attention from both economists and educators in the future. The paper concludes with two further challenges for those who work with concepts of human capital and development. The first concerns units of analysis conventionally used in the social sciences. The second concerns the way that economic growth, the dependent variable of human capital theory, is specified in relation to the broader goals of human and societal development.