Becker was one of the first economists to analyze topics that had been researched insociology, includingracial discrimination,crime, family organization, andrational addiction. He argued that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility-maximizing, including those that are often regarded as self-destructive or irrational. His approach also extended to altruistic aspects of human behavior, which he showed to sometimes have self-serving ends (when individuals' utility is properly defined and measured, that is). He was also among the foremost exponents of the study ofhuman capital. According toMilton Friedman, he was "the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked" in the second part of the twentieth century.[5]
Becker was born to aJewish family[6] inPottsville, Pennsylvania. He received aBA fromPrinceton University in 1951, completing a senior thesis titled "The Theory of Multi-Country Trade".[7] He then earned aPhD from theUniversity of Chicago in 1955 with a thesis entitledThe Economics of Discrimination.[8] At Chicago, Becker was influenced byMilton Friedman, whom Becker called "by far the greatest living teacher I have ever had".[9] Becker credits Friedman's course on microeconomics for helping to renew his interest in economics. Becker also noted that during his time at Chicago, there were several other economists that greatly influenced his future work, namelyGregg Lewis,T. W. Schultz,Aaron Director, andL. J. Savage.[10]
For a few years, Becker worked as an assistant professor at Chicago and conducted research there.[10] Before turning 30, he moved to teach atColumbia University in 1957 while also conducting research at theNational Bureau of Economic Research. In 1970 Becker returned to the University of Chicago, and in 1983 was offered a joint appointment by the Sociology Department of Chicago.[10] In 1965 he was elected as aFellow of the American Statistical Association.[11]
A politicalconservative,[21] he wrote a monthly column forBusiness Week from 1985 to 2004, alternating with liberal Princeton economistAlan Blinder. In 1996 Becker was a senior adviser to Republican presidential candidateRobert Dole.[22] In December 2004, Becker started a joint weblog with JudgeRichard Posner entitledThe Becker-Posner Blog.[23]
Becker's work has been influential not only in economics but also other disciplines including sociology and demography. His most famous work isHuman Capital, and he wrote on sociological topics as diverse as marriage, the family, criminal behavior, and racial discrimination.[24]
Becker recognized that people (employers, customers, and employees) sometimes do not want to work with minorities because they have bias against the disadvantaged groups. He went on to say that discrimination increases a firm's cost because in discriminating against certain workers, the employer would have to pay more to other workers so that work can proceed without the biased ones. If the employer employs the minority, low wages can be provided, but more people can be employed, and productivity can be increased.[25]
Becker's contributions to politics have come to be known as "Chicago political economy" of which he is considered one of the founding fathers.[26]
Becker's insight was to recognize thatdeadweight losses put a brake on predation. He took the well-known insight that deadweight losses are proportional to the square of the tax, and used it to argue that a linear increase in takings by a predatory interest group will provoke a non-linear increase in the deadweight losses its victim suffers. These rapidly increasing losses will prod victims to invest equivalent sums in resisting attempts on their wealth. The advance of predators, fueled by linear incentives, slows before the stiffening resistance of prey outraged by non-linear damages.[27]
JuristRichard Posner has stressed the enormous influence of Becker's work which "has turned out to be a fount of economic writing on crime and its control",[28] as well as the analytics of crime and punishment.[29]
While Becker acknowledged that many people operate under a high moral and ethical constraint, criminals rationally see that the benefits of their crime outweigh the cost which depends upon the probability of apprehension, conviction, and punishment, and their current set of opportunities. From a public policy perspective, since the cost of increasing a fine is trivial in comparison to the cost of increasing surveillance, one can conclude that the best policy is to maximize the fine and minimize surveillance.[30]
In his 1964 bookHuman Capital Theories Becker introduced the economic concept ofhuman capital. This book is now a classic in economic research and Becker went on to become a defining proponent of theChicago school of economics. The book was republished in 1975 and 1993. Becker considered labor economics to be part of capital theory. He mused that "economists and plan-makers have fully agreed with the concept of investing on human beings".[31]
Becker’s work on human capital changed how economists think about education and skills. He argued that people gain economic value when they invest in things like schooling, training, and health, similar to how companies invest in machines or technology. This idea helped explain why workers with more education often earn higher wages and why countries benefit when they support learning and skill development. Becker’s approach also shaped later research on how people choose to improve their skills and how governments can design programs that strengthen the workforce. His theory became important in discussions about income differences, showing that part of the wage gap comes from differences in investment in knowledge and abilities. While some scholars say human capital theory does not fully address social and structural barriers, Becker’s ideas remain highly influential and continue to guide research on education, labor markets, and economic growth.[32]
Together, Becker andJacob Mincer founded Modern Household Economics, sometimes called the New Home Economics (NHE), in the 1960s at the labor workshop at Columbia University that they both directed.Shoshana Grossbard, who was a student of Becker at the University of Chicago, first published a history of the NHE at Columbia and Chicago in 2001.[33] After receiving feedback from the NHE founders she revised her account.[34]
Among the first publications in Modern Household Economics were Becker (1960) on fertility,[35] Mincer (1962) on women's labor supply,[36] and Becker (1965) on the allocation of time.[37][38] Students and faculty who attended the Becker-Mincer workshop at Columbia in the 1960s and have published in the NHE tradition include Andrea Beller,Barry Chiswick, Carmel Chiswick,Victor Fuchs,Michael Grossman, Robert Michael,June E. O'Neill, Sol Polachek, and Robert Willis.James Heckman was also influenced by the NHE tradition and attended the labor workshop at Columbia from 1969 until his move to the University of Chicago. The NHE may be seen as a subfield offamily economics.[39][40]
In 2013, responding to a lack of women in top positions in the United States, Becker told theWall Street Journal reporterDavid Wessel, "A lot of barriers [to women and blacks] have been broken down. That's all for the good. It's much less clear what we see today is the result of such artificial barriers. Going home to take care of the kids when the man doesn't: Is that a waste of a woman's time? There's no evidence that it is." This view was criticized byCharles Jones, stating that, "Productivity could be 9 percent to 15 percent higher, potentially, if all barriers were eliminated."[41]
In the mid-1960s, Becker andKelvin Lancaster developed the economic concept of a household production function. Both assumed thatconsumers in a household receive utility from the goods they purchase. Such as for example, when consumers purchase raw food. If it is cooked, a utility arises from the meal. In 1981 Becker publishedTreatise on the Family, where he stressed the importance ofdivision of labor andgains fromspecification.[42]
During Becker's time at Chicago in the 1970s, he mostly focused on the family. He had previously done work on birth rates and family size, and he used this time to expand his understanding of how economics works within a family.[10] Some specific family issues covered during this time were marriage, divorce, altruism toward other members of the family, investments by parents in their children, and long-term changes in what families do. All of Becker's research on the family resulted inA Treatise on the Family (1981). Throughout the decade, he contributed new ideas and information, and in 1991 an expanded edition of the work was published. His research applies basic economic assumptions such as maximizing behavior, preferences, and equilibrium to the family. He analyzed determinants for marriage and divorce, family size, parents' allocation of time to their children, and changes in wealth over several generations. This publication was an extensive overview of the economics of the family and helped to unite economics with other fields like sociology and anthropology.[43]
At the core of Becker's economic theory on thefamily, which he developed on the basis of figures for United States families in 1981, is therotten kid theorem. He applied the economics of analtruist to a family, wherein a person takes actions that improve the well-being of another person, despite more self-interested action being feasible. Becker pointed out that a parent forgoes higher income, by focusing on family work commitments in order to maximize a well-meaning objective. Becker also theorized that a child in a US family may be perfectly selfish because it maximizes its own utility. There have been attempts to test this economic thesis, in the course of which it was found that cross-generational families do not necessarily maximize their joint income.[44]
A 2007 article by Gary Becker andJulio Jorge Elias entitled "Introducing Incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations"[45] posited that a free market could help solve the problem of a scarcity in organ transplants. Their economic modeling was able to estimate the price tag for human kidneys (about US$15,000) and human livers (about US$32,000). It is argued by critics that this particular market would exploit the underprivileged donors from the developing world.[46]
Becker's first wife was Doria Slote. They were married from 1954 until her death in 1970.[10] The marriage produced two daughters, Catherine Becker andJudy Becker.[22] About ten years later, in 1980[10] Becker marriedGuity Nashat, ahistorian of theMiddle East whose research interests overlapped his own.[47]
In 2014 Becker died inChicago,Illinois, aged 83, due to surgical complications.[48] The same year, he was honored in a three-day conference organized at the University of Chicago.[49]
Gary Becker (1993) [1964].Human capital: a theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education (3rd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.ISBN9780226041209.
Gary Becker (1968), "Discrimination, economic", in Sills, David L. (ed.),International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Vol. 4 Cumu to Elas, New York, New York: Macmillan, pp. 208–210
Gary Becker (1969), "An economic analysis of fertility", in National Bureau of Economic Research (ed.),Demographic and economic change in developed countries, a conference of the universities, New York:Columbia University Press, pp. 209–240,ISBN9780870143021
Gary Becker (1974).Essays in the economics of crime and punishment. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research distributed by Columbia University Press.ISBN9780870142635.
Gary Becker (March 1974). "A theory of marriage: part II".Journal of Political Economy.82 (2):11–26.doi:10.1086/260287.S2CID222442284.
Gary Becker (1976), "Price and prejudice", in Becker, Gary S. (ed.),The economic approach to human behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 15–17,ISBN9780226041124
Gary Becker; George J. Stigler (March 1977). "De gustibus non est disputandum".The American Economic Review.67 (2):76–90.
Gary Becker; Kevin M. Murphy (2000).Social economics market behavior in a social environment. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.ISBN9780674011212.
^"Jeffrey P. Bezos Biography Photo". 2001.Seated from left to right: Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, nautical archaeologist Dr. George Bass, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics Gary S. Becker, CEO of Hearst Corporation Frank A. Bennack, Jr., CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos, and director of the National Gallery of Art J. Carter Brown at the honoree reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies during the American Academy of Achievement's 2001 Summit held in San Antonio.
^Steven M. Teles (2008),The rise of the conservative legal movement: the battle for control of the law, Princeton University Press, p. 98,ISBN9781400829699
^Filip Palda (2016) A Better Kind of Violence, Chicago Political Economy, Public Choice, and the Quest for an Ultimate Theory of Power, Cooper-Wolfling Press
^Gary Becker (August 1983). "A theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence".Quarterly Journal of Economics.98 (3):371–400.doi:10.2307/1886017.JSTOR1886017.
^Richard A. Posner (2004).Frontiers of legal theory. Harvard University Press. p. 52.ISBN9780674013605.
^Bernard Harcourt, ed. (2011),The illusion of free markets: punishment and the myth of natural order, Harvard University Press, pp. 133–134,ISBN9780674057265
^Gary Becker (1974), "Crime and punishment: an economic approach",Essays in the economics of crime and punishment, New York: National Bureau of Economic Research distributed by Columbia University Press, pp. 1–54,ISBN9780870142635
^Min Zhu (2012).Business, Economics, Financial Sciences, and Management. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 436.ISBN9783642279669.
^Gary Becker (1964).Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. University of Chicago Press. p. 412.ISBN9780226041100.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Shoshana Grossbard (2006) "The New Home Economics at Columbia and Chicago" in Jacob Mincer: A Pioneer of Modern Labor Economics, edited by S Grossbard, Springer
^Becker, Gary S. 1960. "An Economic Analysis of Fertility." In the National Bureau Committee for Economic Research, Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries, a Conference of the Universities. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
^Jacob Mincer (1962). "Labor Force Participation of Married Women: a Study of Labor Supply". In H. Gregg Lewis (ed.).Aspects of Labor Economics. Princeton University Press.
^Gary Becker (1965). "A Theory of the Allocation of Time".The Economic Journal.75 (299):493–517.doi:10.2307/2228949.JSTOR2228949.
^Jan De Vries (2008)The industrious revolution: consumer behavior and the household economy, Cambridge, p. 26[ISBN missing]
^Berk Richard A., Fenstermaker Berk Sarah (1983). "Supply-side sociology of the family: The challenge of the new home economics".Annual Review of Sociology.9 (1):375–395.doi:10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.002111.
^Wei Zhang (2006).Economic Growth with Income and Wealth Distribution. Springer. p. 71.ISBN9780230506336.
^Becker, Gary S. ([1981] 1991).A Treatise on the Family, Enl. edition.Description andpreview. Harvard University Press.ISBN0674906985.
^Herbert Gintis (2000).Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Behavior. Princeton University Press. pp. 34–35.ISBN9780691009438.
^Vivekanand Jha & Kirpal S. Chugh (September 2006). "The case against a regulated system of living kidney sales".Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology.2 (9):466–467.doi:10.1038/ncpneph0268.PMID16941033.S2CID9253108.
