This paper examines how the emergence of human capital theory was underpinned by a sexual biopolitics. The paper specifically focuses on the oeuvre of the Chicago School economist and Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker, who is considered to be the most radical of the neoliberal thinkers. Becker’s contribution was to introduce an where all human behaviour could be understood through investment in utility maximisation -- an approach that informs behavioural economics, which is increasingly mobilised in a number of policy areas. Contemporary critical debates on human capital however often miss that the study of human fertility, marriage, and the family were central recurring themes of his work from 1960 until his death. In this paper I argue that the family and especially its reproduction were a central part of Becker's human capital theory. I then focus on the crucial and highly influential way in which Becker revolutionised the social sciences by instituting a new regime of truth about population change and the human life course through a new understanding of sex and reproduction.
