Gary Becker

Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist and sociologist who pioneered the application of economic theory to social issues including human capital, family formation, racial discrimination, and criminal behavior. Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Becker earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Princeton University in 1951 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1955, where he later became University Professor of Economics and Sociology. His seminal contributions emphasized rational individual decision-making in non-market contexts, such as viewing education as an investment in human capital that yields returns through higher productivity and earnings, and modeling crime as a rational calculus weighing costs and benefits. Becker received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 for extending microeconomic analysis to human behavior and interactions, influencing disciplines like sociology, demography, and law. He also analyzed discrimination as an economic preference with costs borne primarily by discriminators, challenging prevailing sociological explanations, and developed theories of household production where time allocation determines family outcomes like marriage and fertility.

Becker was born to a Jewish family in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.