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Becker himself highlighted research findings that one quarter of the rise in per-person incomes from 1929 to 1982 in America was because of increases in schooling.
貝克爾本人強調了美國的人均收入在1929年到1982間的提高中的四分之一是因為教育的發展的研究發現。
Much of the rest, he insisted, was a result of harder-to-measure gains in human capital such as on-the-job training and better health.
他堅稱，余下的大都是人力資本中那些更加難以衡量的收獲的結果，如在職培訓和更好的健康。
He was also fond of pointing to the success of Asian economies such as South Korea and Taiwan, endowed with few natural resources other than their populations, as proof of the value of investing in human capital—and in particular of building up education systems.
他還喜歡把南韓和中國臺灣這些除了人口之外沒有被賦予多少自然資源的亞洲經濟體的成功，看成人力資本投資——尤其是構建教育體系投資——的價值的證明。
Becker's original analysis focused on the private benefits to students, but economists who followed in his footsteps expanded their field of study to include the broader social gains from having well-educated populations.
貝克爾的原創分析把重點放在了學生的私人收獲上面，但是，追隨他的腳步的經濟學家把他們的研究領域擴到到了擁有受過良好教育的人口的更為廣泛的社會收獲方面。
The importance of human capital is now taken for granted.
如今，人力資本的重要性已經不言而喻。
What is more controversial is the question of how to cultivate it.
更具爭議性的是如何培育人力資本的問題。
For those inclined to support a bigger state, one interpretation of Becker's analysis is that the government ought to pour money into education and make it widely available at a low cost.
對于傾向于支持大政府的人來說，對貝克爾分析的一種解釋是，政府應當把錢投入教育，使之可以廣泛地以低成本獲得。
For a conservative, the conclusion might be that the private gains from education are so big that students should bear the costs of tuition.
對于保守人士而言，結論可能是，教育的私人收獲之大，使得學生應該承擔學費成本。
Although Becker's academic writings rarely strayed into policy prescriptions, his popular writings—a monthly Businessweek column that began in the 1980s and blog posts in later years—offer a measure of his views.
盡管貝克爾的學術著作幾乎從不涉及政策處方，但是，他的通俗文章——始于上世紀80年代的《商業周刊》月度專欄以及后來日子里的博客文章——卻提供了對他的觀點的一種衡量標準。
For starters, he talked of “bad inequality” but also “good inequality”, an unfashionable idea today.
首先，他談到過“壞的不平等”，也曾論及“好的不平等”，這一當今不流行的觀點。
Higher earnings for scientists, doctors and computer programmers help motivate students to tackle these difficult subjects, in the process pushing knowledge forward; from this perspective, inequality contributes to human capital.
科學家、醫生和計算機程序員的越來越高的收入有助于激發學生涉足這些困難的課題，在這一過程中推動知識進步；從這個角度來看，不平等有助于人力資本。
But when inequality gets too extreme, the schooling and even the health of children from poor families suffer, with their parents unable adequately to provide for them.
但是，當不平等變得過于極端，學校教育乃至貧困家庭的孩子都會因為父母不能足夠地提供給他們而深受其害。
Inequality of this sort depresses human capital, leaving society worse off.
這種不平等讓人力資本貶值，使社會每況愈下。
As for the debate about whether government-funded universities should raise tuition fees, Becker thought that only fair, given that their graduates could expect higher lifetime earnings.
至于由政府資助的大學是否應當提高學費的爭論，貝克爾認為，考慮到它們的畢業生可以期望更高的終身收入，這是唯一公平的。
Rather than subsidising students who go on to become bankers or lawyers, he argued that it would be more productive for the government to fund research and development.
他指出，與其資助今后將成為銀行家或者律師的學生，政府把資金用于研發會更加高效。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
