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THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF HUMAN CAPITAL: MEASUREMENT OF CONTRIBUTING MECHANISMS
Author(s) -
McHenry Peter
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of regional science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1467-9787
pISSN - 0022-4146
DOI - 10.1111/jors.12067
Subject(s) - human capital , distribution (mathematics) , economics , educational attainment , labour economics , capital (architecture) , physical capital , demographic economics , affect (linguistics) , economic geography , economic growth , geography , sociology , mathematical analysis , mathematics , archaeology , communication
This paper investigates how the geographic distribution of human capital—measured as college attainment—evolves over time. With U.S. data, I decompose generation‐to‐generation changes in local human capital into three factors: the previous generation's human capital, intergenerational transmission of skills from parents to their children, and migration of the children. I find significant persistence of local skills at the commuting zone (local labor market) level. Labor market size, climate, and local colleges affect local skill measures. Skills move from urban‐to‐rural labor markets through intergenerational transmission but from rural‐to‐urban labor markets through migration.