The Geographic Distribution of Human Capital: Measurement of Contributing Mechanisms

Peter McHenry ()

No 92, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: This paper investigates how the geographic distribution of human capital 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 evidence of regression to the mean of local skills at the state level and divergence at the commuting zone level. Labor market size, climate, local colleges, and taxes affect local skill measures. Skills move from urban to rural labor markets through intergenerational transmission but from rural to urban labor markets through migration.

Keywords: Migration; Intergenerational transmission; Regional labor markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2010-09-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.wm.edu/wp/cwm_wp92.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF HUMAN CAPITAL: MEASUREMENT OF CONTRIBUTING MECHANISMS (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cwm:wpaper:92

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daifeng He ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and Alfredo Pereira ().