Human Capital Inequality and Economic Growth: Some New Evidence

Abstract

This paper provides new measures of human capital inequality for a broad panel of countries. Taking attainment levels from Barro and Lee (2001), we compute Gini coef®cients and the distribution of education by quintiles for 108 countries over ®ve-year intervals from 1960 to 2000. Using this new cross-country data on human capital inequality two main conclusions are obtained. First, most countries in the world have tended to reduce the inequality in human capital distribution. Second, human capital inequality measures provide more robust results than income inequality measures in the estimation of standard growth and investment equations.

The unequal lag in Latin American schooling since 1900: follow the money

“…had a negative effect on economic growth since 1960 (Castelló and Domé-nech 2002). Second, we should note that primary vs. tertiary fingerprint of Table 3 offers telling evidence even without an education-income anomaly.…”

Reforming Welfare States

“…Existing empirical results confirm that overall education inequality tends to be harmful for economic growth (Castelló and Doménech, 2002). Castelló-Climent (2011) identifies several mechanisms that explain such an effect.…”

“…The results in Checchi (2000) do not support the existence of an education Kuznet's curve, but reveal instead a strong negative relation between the degree of inequality and the average level of educational attainment. Castelló and Doménech (2002) compute Gini coefficients using years of schooling for a broad sample of countries and Castelló-Climent and Doménech (2012) and Sauer and Zagler (2012b) provide an update of the dataset which spans a larger historical period. 5 While the results in Castelló and Doménech (2002) show that uneven distributions of human capital tend to be directly related to lower income per capita growth rates, the evidence of Sauer and Zagler (2012b) reveals that countries that show greater education inequality experience lower macroeconomic returns to education than more equal economies, on average.…”

New trajectories in urban regeneration processes: Cultural capital as source of human and social capital accumulation – Evidence from the case of Tohu in Montreal

“…However, from the local community's point of view, the emphasis is on the social practices of creativity and their meaning: having the opportunity to live a creative life is an end in itself, and all of its further implications come as a second thought (Markusen, 2006;Markusen & Schrock, 2006). The literature on the relationships between culture and local development processes has so far given relatively little attention, both at the theoretical and policy levels, to issues related to local community development or to the effect of culture on the accumulation of human capital (Castello & Domenech 2002;Judoson 2002) and social capital (Glaeser, Laibson, & Sacerdote 2002;Putnam 2001), while in our view, these are fundamental issues. This lack of attention is at least partly because a proper conceptualization of the role of culture in shaping the codes of rationality for the production and accumulation of intangible assets is still lacking.…”

“…Social Capital consists of a shared pool of norms, informal rules, conventions and practices connecting members of a group and allowing them to coordinate their actions to reach common interest goals. There are several approaches to HC and SC, from either social or economic perspectives (see e.g., OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation, 1998;Castello & Domenech, 2002;Judoson, 2002;Levy & Murnane 1999;Putnam, 2001). HC and SC are forms of capital in that, like physical or natural capital, they can be regarded as stock that increases or decreases depending on whether it is fed by certain types of investment and maintenance.…”