Is human capital accumulation a self-propelling process? Comparing educational attainment levels of movers and stayers

The paper aims at understanding changes in the distribution and accumulation of intellectual capital. It compares the educational profiles of in-migrants and non-migrants across a sample of 303 U.S. counties and tests a stock-flow model that poses that a well-educated population stock attracts a wel...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Annals of regional science 2009-06, Vol.43 (2), p.323-344
Main Author: Waldorf, Brigitte S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Bgi / Prodig
Economic growth
Economics
Economics and Finance
Education
Educational attainment
Environmental Economics
Geography
Human capital
Human geography
Immigration
Intellectual capital
Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning
Microeconomics
Migrants
Migration
Migrations
Original Paper
Population
Population geography and social geography
Regional/Spatial Science
Regions
Rural areas
Secondary schools
Social mobility
Socioeconomic factors
Studies
Urban areas
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The paper aims at understanding changes in the distribution and accumulation of intellectual capital. It compares the educational profiles of in-migrants and non-migrants across a sample of 303 U.S. counties and tests a stock-flow model that poses that a well-educated population stock attracts a well-educated migrant flow. The results suggest that newcomers are better educated than the resident population, and the education gap is most pronounced for newcomers from other states. The results further suggest that the educational status of newcomers (“in-migrants”) is positively related to the educational status of the resident population (“stayers”), thus implying a further agglomeration of human capital across space. However, for interstate migrants the effect is context-dependent, playing a greater role in urban settings and diminishing in more rural settings.
ISSN:0570-1864
1432-0592
DOI:10.1007/s00168-008-0225-z