Economists define human capital as the acquired skills and knowledge an individual can draw upon to generate outputs of value. Human capital may be applied to generate value in the labour market, or may applied to produce other valued individual or societal outcomes such as improved personal health or active civic engagement. An important portion of human capital is acquired in childhood and adolescence, as a result of both formal education and the socialization experiences provided by families and peer groups. It is plausible to expect that health status in childhood and adolescence will influence human capital development, primarily through effects on educational attainment. Children with poor physical or mental health may be impaired in gaining maximum benefits from primary and secondary schooling and may have lower expectations for postsecondary educational attainment. Children with robust physical and mental health may have more energy and personal resources for responding to the relatively high expectations of the current education curriculum. These differences in the opportunity to gain human capital, determined by health status, have the potential to shape, in part, the socioeconomic mobility opportunities of individual birth cohorts.