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Born on this day
Theodore William Schultz
Theodore William Schultz (April 30, 1902 – February 26, 1998) was the 1979 winner (jointly with William Arthur Lewis) of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
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Theodore William Schultz30.4.1902

Wikipedia (20 Mar 2013, 15:51)
Theodore William Schultz (April 30, 1902 – February 26, 1998) was the 1979 winner (jointly with William Arthur Lewis) of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.


Biography

Schultz was born in Arlington, South Dakota and enrolled in South Dakota State College in 1921 to study agriculture. He graduated in 1927, then entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison earning his doctorate in Agricultural Economics in 1930.

He taught at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943, and served as the chair of economics at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1961. He became president of the American Economic Association in 1960.


Death

Schultz died in Evanston, Illinois on February 26, 1998. He is interred at Badger Cemetery in Badger, South Dakota.


Contributions

Schultz was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in development economics, focusing on the economics of agriculture. He analysed the role of agriculture within the economy, and his work has had far reaching implications on industrialisation policy, both in developing and developed nations. Schultz also promulgated the idea of educational capital, an offshoot of the concept of human capital, relating specifically to the investments made in education.

Schultz researched into why post-World War II Germany and Japan recovered, at almost miraculous speeds from the widespread devastation. Contrast this with the United Kingdom which was still rationing food long after the war. His conclusion was that the speed of recovery was due to a healthy and highly educated population; education makes people productive and good healthcare keeps the education investment around and able to produce. One of his main contributions was later called Human Capital Theory, and inspired a lot of work in international development in the 1980s, motivating investments in vocational and technical education by Bretton Woods system International Financial Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.


Quotes

The dominant social thought shapes the institutionalized order of society...and the malfunctioning of established institutions in turn alters social thought. -- Theodore W. Schultz (1977).

Most people in the world are poor. If we knew the economy of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matter.



   
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