Education and productivity growth in a market economy

The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of investment in education on U.S. economic growth. Education is treated as an investment in human capital, since benefits accrue to an educated individual over a lifetime of activities. One of the most important benefits is higher income from participation in the labor market. This is the key to understanding the link between investment in education and economic growth. The most important finding is that investment in human and nonhuman capital accounts for an overwhelming proportion of the growth of the U.S. economy during the postwar period. Educational investment will continue to predominate in the investment requirements for more rapid growth.Invited Address at the Thirty-Fourth Atlantic Economic Society Conference, October 15–18, 1992, Plymouth, Massachusetts.     

ACCOUNTING FOR HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: A PROTOTYPE SATELLITE ACCOUNT USING THE AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY

This paper presents a satellite account where households are treated as production units. It extends previous work that treats consumer durables as investment and that values nonmarket household production activities such as cooking, cleaning, and childcare. Services from consumer durables and government capital related to household production are also valued. In constructing the updated accounts, this paper incorporates new time use data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) and the harmonized time use data from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS). This paper also discusses and incorporates recommendations made by the U.S. National Academies panel on nonmarket accounts.     

Regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China 1985–2014

This study investigates the regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China. We develop a new comprehensive human capital measure based on the Jorgenson-Fraumeni (J-F) lifetime income framework, in addition to using the traditional education-based human capital measures. We find that the new J-F human capital measure reflects more closely the regional economic disparity than the education-based measures. We also conduct a Divisia decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of different factors to the quantity and quality growth of human capital and to regional disparity. Our results show that the regional human capital gaps in China are enlarging in general. Education and urbanization contribute most to human capital growth, while population aging shows a strong negative effect. Our estimates create a new provincial level human capital panel dataset from 1985 to 2014, which is useful for empirical work and policy analysis.