Gary S. Becker, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science in 1993, is Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago. Becker is recognized for his expertise in human capital, economics of the family, and economic analysis of crime, discrimination, and population. His current research focuses on habits and addictions, formation of preferences, human capital, and population growth. Becker is a featured monthly columnist for Business Week magazine and served as an economic policy adviser for the Dole Presidential Campaign in 1996. He received the National Medal of Science in 2000 for his work in social policy. He is the 2004 recipient of the Jacob Mincer Prize for lifetime achievement in the field of labour economics and is one of the initial fellows of the Society of Labour Economists. Becker's most recent publications include (with Guity Nashat) The Economics of Life (McGraw Hill, 1997) and Accounting for Tastes (Harvard University Press, 1996). He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal work Human Capital (Columbia University Press, 1964; 3d edition, 1993), which was awarded the prestigious W.S.Woytinskty Award in 1964. Other books by Becker include A Treatise on the Family (Harvard University Press, 1981; expanded edition, 1991) and The Economic Approach to Human Behaviour (University of Chicago Press, 1976). Becker was editor of Essays in Labour Economics in Honour of H. Gregg Lewis and (with Gilbert Ghez) The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle (Columbia University Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1975).

His other professional activities include serving as a research associate of the Economics Research Center at the National Opinion Research Center (1980- ) and as an associate member of the Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy for the Ministry of Finance in Japan (1988- ). In addition to being a Nobel laureate, Becker is a recipient of the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom. Becker was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1954 to 1957 and at Columbia University from 1957 to 1968. In 1968-1969 he was a Ford Foundation visiting professor of economics at the University of Chicago before joining the Department of Economics there in 1970. Becker received an A.B. (summa cum laude) from Princeton University in 1951, an A.M. from the University of Chicago in 1952, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1955.

WWS' interest in Gary Becker's ideas is mainly due to the conclusions that can be derived from his theory of "human capital", allowing economic analysis theories to be applied to all types of human behaviour.

Social capital is a concept that liberal economists and sociologists have discovered relatively recently. It includes a combination of relationship networks, membership groups and norms or values that can facilitate cooperation between members of society and the groups themselves. In Human Capital (1964), Becker set this concept side by side with the concept of human capital as a source of knowledge and abilities of an individual, to be utilised directly in the work market. Therefore if social capital resides "between persons", human capital can be found "in persons".

In the increasingly globalised world of today, with older populations and more flexibility in the work market, the wellbeing of a community is directly related to the availability of human and social capital. Thus, education, professional training and continuing education for citizens during their working lives, in addition to health care, are fundamental ingredients to ensure competitiveness. The growth possibilities of individuals and entire nations depend upon their abilities and the chances available to them so they can develop and mobilize skills and knowledge, improve health and build on the traditions and customs of its people.

Becker is well aware that the innermost and primary unit of human capital is the family. But he also knows that it is supported by the institutional and non-institutional tools that society makes available to its members. Depending on their status and income, however, individuals, have unequal access to these tools, with inevitable consequences in terms of inequality and social order. The repercussions of problems of human capital development are not merely financial. They can end up affecting, for example, health, marriage and the family, raising children and, in general, the possibility of planning resource use. when such problems arise, the ability of individuals to adapt to unexpected events decreases, fear of the future increases and therefore insecurity and hardship also increase. Not infrequently this can lead to attempts to gain access with largely illegal systems to goods or positions that, legally speaking,would be out of bounds, using behaviours which border on the deviant and criminal.

Thus, as Becker stubbornly repeats in his more recent presentations, the challenge of post-modern society must be in its willingness to invest in people, rather than in "things". Those who have desired and been able to acquire and develop specific knowledge and skills have seen the results in economic benefits and income levels, increasing according to higher levels of knowledge and skills. Only in this way it is possible to break the vicious circle, where the direct consequence of inequality in the possession of different types of human capital is inequality in income, both factors being connected to situations of social marginalisation. When individual governments pay attention to these factors, Becker's personal solution to problems of citizens' security is the use of deterrents. Since the end of the 1960s, he has been a pioneer of so-called crime and economics, an economic approach to criminally relevant behaviour analysis based on the assumption that if the punishment is appropriate (meaning it is a punishment significantly greater than the advantage gained by the crime), a rational criminal would refrain from committing it. Consequently, it follows that more severe punishment must inevitably lead to a reduction in criminal behaviour

It is in the light of the strict application of the postulates of this theory that we need to interpret his position in favour of the death penalty for particularly serious crimes, for example, rape or child murder, since the purpose of the maximum punishment is that of prevention and not necessarily that of punishment. As he said during his talk at the Festival dell'Economia (Economics Festival), which took place in Trento in June 2007, "criminals must first of all be fought with (…) a better work market, a better level of culture, more legal opportunities especially for the younger generations". Thus, even finding the courage to react to fear (in this case, to the fairly real threat to personal safety)- which is where the WWS debate takes its inspiration - must first take the form of a qualitatively better human capital.