Building Human Capital Where It Matters

Human capital— the health, knowledge, skills, and experience that people accumulate throughout their lives— is essential for productivity and economic growth. Yet, progress has stalled, and there have even been reversals in human capital accumulation over the last 15 years. Two-thirds of low- and middle-income countries experienced declines in nutrition, learning, or workforce skill development between 2010 and 2025. Building Human Capital Where It Matters argues that, to accelerate human capital development and accumulation, the focus of policy needs to be expanded beyond schools and clinics to include other key settings where human capital is built: the home, the neighborhood, and the workplace. This settings approach provides an understanding of some of the crucial drivers of human capital accumulation, such as care for children and adolescents in the home, the social dynamics and the quality of the environment in neighborhoods, and job attributes that foster learning at work. It also makes evident the benefits of collaboration across various departments of governments and between the public and private sectors and the need for a more ambitious data agenda that tracks progress in human capital in the home, the neighborhood, and the workplace.