By: Meghan Deasy
A parent influences many things in their child’s lives whether it be how the child reacts to certain situations or even how to love, but they also affect their child’s impact on the economy by contributing to their human capital. “Human capital is the sum total of skills embodied within an individual…what you would be left with if someone stripped away all of your assets.” [2] It is a common thought that if a child is apart of a wealthy family they are most likely taken care for, they receive the best education, therefore, they receive the best opportunities because their parents worked hard creating a high human capital. Along with a cycle of hardworking and high earning workers that can be ‘classified’ as the top ten percent. But how much of our human capital is contributed to by our parents? How does our birth contribute to the amount of capital we can obtain? Human capital is determined by several factors, but the parental impact on birth and education is a large contributor towards having a high or low human capital.
Even before birth our parents have been chosen and our DNA already formed, and they choose how we come into this world. A mother chooses whether to continue the pregnancy or not contributing to whether the child has human capital or not. If a mother listens to medical advice given to her, she can choose not to take prenatal vitamins or be scan regularly making sure the child is healthy. Some of these decisions a parent makes before birth are up to choice but most times it’s up to finance. A mother could lack proper nutrients, therefore, affect the child’s life significantly. By either taking all medical advice or not the parents have already started impacting their child’s human capital. A child born prematurely has significant setbacks that can delay education and sometimes lead to special needs which contributes to a child never being able to obtain certain skills. According to the United States Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, Authors Richer C. Johnson and Robert F. Schoeni found that poor health at birth and limited resources from the parents contributes to worse labor market and overall human capital. “[Parents] can influence the human capital of their children through investments in their health, learning, and motivation.” A child can be born perfectly healthy but still affected by their parents’ choices of whether or not they ate correctly, read to every day to increase cognition or not.
Education is an important factor in how the economy runs, without it who would have the skills to manage the money, who would have the skill to run the federal reserve, who would have the ability to make sure the economy wasn’t damaged beyond repair? In order to do so, a person must be educated to acquire certain skills. The problem is that nearly 1.3 million students dropped out of high school and twenty-three percent claim its due to lack of parental support and encouragement. By dropping out of high school these students have subjected themselves to fast food jobs and labor-intensive work with minimal pay. Out of the high school dropouts, only seventeen percent had full-time jobs, and forty-six percent of those employed have no opportunity to advance in their careers. The sad thing is that if the parents took the time to support their children, they, their children, could have avoided having the human capital impacted. The lack of support and involvement from a parent most likely occurs due to more work. Either the parents have such a high paying and time-consuming job that the child gets pushed aside. Or the parent has a minimum wage job where they work a lot to make ends meet. Most likely in this scenario, the child dropped out to help make ends meet. Either way, both parents in both scenarios are doing a disservice to their child and to their child’s human capital. By not supporting their child they are increasing the likelihood of depression which could lead to further complications. But the main problem in this scenario besides the parent’s unavailability is the life sentence of a minimal skilled job forever impacting their human capital. These minimally skilled jobs can be displaced fairly too easily by the frequent amount of technological advancement. Leaving them with no job and no skills to obtain another. The economy does not need more burger flippers and by being a high school dropout. Teenagers will experience difficulty staying in the job market and won’t be able to move up due to them not receiving a full education. The human capital of the teenagers will be low due to them lacking the skills one would have acquired during high school and college.
Human capital is all about the people and their skills which helps the economy run. What would have happened if the surgeon who went through college, medical school, internship, residency, and fellowship had a mother who drank and smoked causing the baby to have brain damage? Or what would happen if the surgeon had parents who did not support their child? We maybe would not have an amazing surgeon who had the skill to save somebodies life. Without those parents, the surgeon and his or her human capital wouldn’t have been as high as it is. Without human capital, the economy couldn’t run, and the job market would shut down because nobody would have the skills to provide a sufficient economy. And if parents didn’t establish and impact our human capital we would be living in that world.
[1] Human Capital: Skills, People, Roles. May 1, 2017. Photograph. Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.masstlc.org/leveraging-human-capital-management-analytics/.
[2] Wheelan, Charles. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
[3] Johnson, Rucker C., and Robert F. Schoeni. The Influence of Early-Life Events on Human Capital, Health Status, and Labor Market Outcomes over the Life Course. September 6, 2011. Accessed December 9, 2018. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3569741/.
[4] Sheehy, Kelsey. “High School Dropouts Blame Lack of Parental Support, Teen Pregnancy. “U.S. News & World Report. Last modified November 14, 2012. Accessed December 9, 2018. https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/11/14/ high-school-dropouts-blame-lack-of-parental-support-teen-pregnancy.
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