Theodore W. Schultz

Who Was Theodore W. Schultz?

Theodore W. Schultz, who went by the name Ted Schultz, was brought into the world on April 30, 1902 and kicked the bucket on Feb. 26, 1998. He was an American Nobel Prize beneficiary, an economist, and the chair of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is generally popular for fostering the Human Capital Theory of economic recovery from disaster.

Life and Career

Theodore W. Schultz was brought into the world on a farm in South Dakota. He went to school until the eighth grade when he left to deal with his family's farm due to labor shortages during World War I. Afterward, motivated by the tenacious financial difficulties he saw around him in the agricultural sector, Schultz would sign up for a special farm-oriented agricultural and economic studies program at South Dakota State. He at long last earned a degree in agriculture and economics in 1928 at 26 years old. All after two years, in 1930, he married Esther Werth, who was the manager of Schultz's works until her death in 1991.

Schultz was a teacher at Iowa State University from 1930 to 1943. In 1943, a contention about oleomargarine erupted with the topic of whose interests economic policies ought to serve: consumers or producers. After the school stifled research ideal toward oleomargarine under tension from dairy producers, Schultz left his position at the university. Schultz went to the University of Chicago, where he would serve the remainder of his career (when he wasn't voyaging internationally for research).

He was made chair of the Economics Department in 1946 and served in that capacity until 1961. He attracted his companion and former student David Gale Johnson to Chicago, and together the pair made substantial contributions to doctrinal, philosophical, and insightful economics, which attracted the support of several rich benefactors and charitable foundations, most eminently the Rockefeller Foundation. He turned into the leader of the American Economic Association in 1960. In 1979, he was awarded the [Nobel Prize for Economics](/nobel-commemoration prize-in-economic-sciences) for his research on the job of human capital in economic development.

Contributions

All through his career Schultz made a number of contributions to the progression of economic science. These remember his work for the agricultural economics of poor and emerging countries and his human capital theory of economic development. In the course of his research, Schultz really ventured out to various nations to meet with neighborhood farmers, village leaders, and workers.

Agriculture in Developing Countries

Schultz extended his initial applied work in agricultural economics to a global spotlight on the development of agricultural districts in moderately poor countries. He contended that economic stagnation across poor, rural, agricultural regions was generally due to government policies that leaned toward more extravagant urban regions over the interests of agriculture. Policies that limit food and agricultural commodity prices, unbalanced taxation of yields and agricultural land, and the disappointment of numerous governments to support research and extension services all smother rural business venture and reduce the incentive and ability of farmers to engage in innovation and investment in agriculture, as per Schultz.

Human Capital and Economic Recovery

Schultz noted the striking speed with which the post-war economies of Japan and West Germany bounced back from the complete obliteration coming about because of World War II, especially in comparison to the somewhat unblemished economic infrastructure of the United Kingdom, which experienced a serious economic depression for a very long time after the war. Schultz established that foreign aid from the Marshall Plan was really harming nearby economies in Europe, in light of the fact that while aid was distributed for free, neighborhood economies were distorted and covered in light of the fact that free and financed aid stifled prices leaving nearby farmers unfit to contend.

Schultz inferred that the root source of Germany's and Japan's prosperity was the solid and educated populations of the two nations, an end which in the long run turned into the basis of Human Capital Theory. This drove him to underline the quality of the population as a key factor in economic growth and development over the quality or quantity of land or other natural resource blessings. This prompted a major shift in the funding of education and wellbeing promotion programs by international institutions, for example, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Features

• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.
• Theodore Schultz was an agricultural economist and the chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.
• Schultz made critical contributions to the economics of rural and agricultural development and the theory of human capital.