believed there would be an under-supply of trained workers because companies would not want to teach skills to employees only to see them poached by rivals. 由于公司不想把技能传授给员工，却眼睁睁地看着他们被对手挖走，会存在受过培训的工人的供给不足。

　　After the second world war, when America's GI bill helped millions complete high school and university, education started to receive more attention from economists, Becker among them. 二战后，当美国的《退伍军人法》(GI bill)帮助数百万人修完了高中和大学时，教育开始受到经济学家的更多的关注，贝克尔就是其中之一。

　　The son of parents who had never got beyond the eighth grade but who filled his childhood home with discussions about politics, he wanted to investigate the structure of society. 作为虽然从未读过8年级以上却让他儿童时代的家中充满了政治讨论的父母的儿子，他想去研究社会结构。

　　Lectures by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, where Becker completed his graduate studies in 1955, showed him the analytical power of economic theory. 米尔顿·弗里德曼在贝克尔1955年读完博士课程的芝加哥大学的讲座给他展示了经济理论的分析力量。

　　Doctoral degree in hand, Becker, then in his mid-20s, was hired by the National Bureau of Economic Research to work on a project calculating returns on schooling. 随后，在25、6岁的时候，博士学位在手的贝克尔受雇于国民经济调查局(National Bureau of Economic Research)，为一个计算教育回报的项目工作。

　　What seemed a simple question led him to realise that no one had yet fleshed out the concept of human capital. 一个看起来简单的问题让他认识到，至今还没有人去充实人力资本概念。

　　In subsequent years he developed it into a full-fledged theory that could be applied to any number of questions and,  在接下来的几年间，他将其发展成一种可以被应用于许多问题

　　soon enough, to issues previously seen as outside the realm of economics, from marriage to fertility. 并且不久又被应用于从婚姻到生育等一系列之前被视为是在经济学领域之外的许多问题的成熟理论。

　　One of Becker's earliest contributions was to distinguish between specific and general human capital. 贝克尔最早的贡献之一是区分了特定性人力资本和一般性人力资本。

　　Specific capital arises when workers acquire knowledge directly tied to their firms, such as how to use proprietary software. 特定性资本出现在工人获取直接与其公司捆绑在一起的知识之时，如如何使用专属软件。

　　Companies are happy to pay for this kind of training because it is not transferable. 公司之所以乐于为这类培训花钱是因为这类培训不是可以转移的。

　　By contrast, as Pigou suggested, firms are often reluctant to stump up for general human capital:  相比之下，正如庇古所指出的那样，公司经常是不情愿为了一般性人力资本而掏腰包：

　　teach employees to be good software programmers and they may well jump ship to whichever company pays them the most. 把雇员培养成优秀程序员，他们就很可能跳槽付给他们最多的公司。