McMurphy versus Becker

Here’s an interesting flaw in human capital theory – the labour market position of people with Asperger’s syndrome. Many of these have high intelligence and great technical skills. They should therefore earn good money.
They don’t. This report from the National Autistic Society shows that only 12 per cent of people with Asperger’s are in employment at all.
This is hard to reconcile with human capital theory. It’s also hard to reconcile with the most interesting alternative to this theory – the notion of incentive-enhancing preferences, as described by Herbert Gintis and Sam Bowles.
Employers, they say, value a university education not so much for the skills it directly creates as for the attributes correlated with it. Graduates are more likely to be self-reliant, trustworthy and have “a good attitude.” And it is this that employers want.
Bowles and Gintis’ theory is slightly different from the better known credentialism, because they allow for the possibility that a university education can cultivate attributes employers want, rather than merely signal them.
However, although their theory can explain one interesting fact that neither human capital not credentialism can explain – the low earnings of mature students – it can’t explain the poor labour market conditions of people with Asperger’s, as these are typically enormously trustworthy and self-reliant.
So, what’s going on? Could it just be that what employers really want is just “people like us”? Isn’t this just what “good communication skills”, “a team player” and so on are euphemisms for?
Maybe those neoclassical economists who regard the workplace as merely somewhere where inputs are technologically transformed into outputs are missing a big point – that employment is about social control and conformity.
On this point, maybe economists have more to learn from Randle McMurphy than Gary Becker.

Comments

[Peter]

The report actually claims that 12% of people *diagnosed* with AS are employed. But I'd expect the proportion of AS 'sufferers' in work to be much higher once you include those who unwittingly, or unofficially, have the same syndrome.

I've met many people who matched the symptoms of Asperger Syndrome perfectly, but whom I doubt have ever been professionally diagnosed with it. The proportion who have been will basically be a self-selecting sample who encounter the greatest problems in everyday social interactions and seek solutions and diagnoses from there. You'd rather expect them to do less well than those who are able to get on with their life, and, dare I predict, earn quite a lot with their high intelligence and great technical skills.

[Will Wilkinson]

Maybe folks with aspergers aren't great at bargaining over wages?