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HUMAN CAPITAL INEQUALITY AND THE KUZNETS CURVE
Author(s) -
LIM Audrey Siew Kim,
TANG Kam Ki
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the developing economies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.305
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1746-1049
pISSN - 0012-1533
DOI - 10.1111/j.1746-1049.2007.00054.x
Subject(s) - inequality , kuznets curve , human capital , economics , income inequality metrics , proxy (statistics) , economic inequality , demographic economics , labour economics , economic growth , mathematics , statistics , mathematical analysis
This paper develops a Mincerian measure of human capital distribution and applies it to evaluate national and global human capital inequality and compare them with education inequality measures. It is shown that using education inequality as a proxy of human capital inequality is problematic due to the nonmonotonic relationship between them. We find that the inconsistent evidence on education and human capital Kuznets curves in the literature is due to the use of different inequality measures. In particular, human capital Kuznets curves are evident when relative inequality measures are used, whereas education Kuznets curves are found when absolute inequality measures are used. It is also observed that while global education inequality has been declining over the past four decades, global human capital inequality remains largely steady, as the decrease in between‐country human capital inequality is largely balanced by the increase in within‐country human capital inequality.