经济学人下载:人力资本:公立大学的学费问题(2)

Yet, concerned by mounting inequality in America, he thought that more should be done to invest in early childhood education and improve the state of schools.
然而，出于对美国不断上升的不平等的担忧，他认为，应当加大在儿童早教方面的投资并提高学校状况。

Becker applied his own prodigious reserves of human capital well beyond education.
贝克尔对他自己庞大的人力资本储备的应用远远超出了教育。

He used his “economic approach” to look at everything from the motives of criminals and drug addicts to the evolution of family structures and discrimination against minorities.
他把他的“经济方法”运用到了考察了从罪犯的动机到吸毒上瘾再到家庭结构的进化以及对少数民族的歧视等所有一切上面。

In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel prize for extending economic analysis to new spheres of human behaviour.
1992年，他因为将经济学分析扩展到人类行为的新领域而荣获诺贝尔奖。

He remains one of the most cited economists of the past half-century.
他仍然是过去50年中被引用最多的经济学家之一。

Mr Becker's way of doing economics, initially a radical challenge to convention, came under attack as it went mainstream.
贝克尔研究经济学的方式，最初是对传统的一种激进挑战，随着它进入主流，开始遭到攻击。

The rise of behavioural economics, with its emphasis on limits to rationality, undercut his depiction of people as rational agents seeking to maximise welfare.
以强调理性极限为特点的行为经济学的兴起，动摇了他将人作为追求福祉最大化的理性代理人的论述。

Improvements in data collection and analysis also gave rise to more detailed empirical research, instead of the wide-ranging concepts that he favoured.
数据收集和分析的提高也让更为详尽的实证研究、而不是他中意的各种大范围的概念得以兴起。

Yet precisely because Mr Becker's analysis touched on so much, it still has a lot to offer.
然而，正是因为贝克尔的分析触及了这么多东西，它仍然有很多可以提供。

Consider the debate on how governments ought to respond to disruptive technological change.
以政府应当如何应对毁灭性技术变革为例。

From the standpoint of human capital, one answer is obvious.
从人力资本的角度来看，一种答案是显而易见的。

Technological advances mean that the knowledge that people acquire in school is becoming obsolete more quickly than before.
技术进步意味着人们在学校中获取的知识正在比以往更快地变得过时。

At the same time, longer life expectancies mean that the returns on mid-career training are higher than in the past.
与此同时，不断延长的预期寿命意味着职业生涯中期培训的回报比过去高了。

It is therefore both necessary and possible to replenish human capital by designing better systems for lifelong learning.
因而，通过设计更好的终身学习体系来充实人力资本既是必需的，也是可能的。

This is just one element of the response to technological disruption but it is a vital one.
这仅仅是对技术毁灭之应对中的一个要素，却是非常关键的一个要素。

Becker never intended that his theory of human capital explain everything in economics, only that it explain a little about a lot.
贝克尔从未有过让他的人力资本理论解释经济学中的一切的想法，他只是认为这一理论解释了许多中的一部分。

On this count his work remains indispensable.
从这方面来说，他的研究仍然是不可或缺的。