TITLE:
Human Capital and the Nature of Humans: Epochal Turning Points over the Neurological Life Span?
AUTHORS:
Frank Peter Stafford
KEYWORDS:
Human Capital, Life Course, Neuroscience Epochs
JOURNAL NAME:
Technology and Investment,
Vol.17 No.2,
April
17,
2026
ABSTRACT: Labor economists have been active students of the life cycle of market work and non-market time (such as training, and other non-market time—such as leisure, retirement and housework). This life cycle research has been studied for decades both theoretically and empirically. Theoretical work and empirical relationships and literally thousands of papers using this empirical estimation approach with both cross sectional and panel data are remarkably robust. The theoretical and empirical results align in important ways with recent work in neuroscience as discussed below.