IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11617.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Divergence of Human Capital Levels Across Cities

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher R. Berry
  • Edward L. Glaeser

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, the share of adult populations with college degrees increased more in cities with higher initial schooling levels than in initially less educated places. This tendency appears to be driven by shifts in labor demand as there is an increasing wage premium for skilled people working in skilled cities. In this paper, we present a model where the clustering of skilled people in metropolitan areas is driven by the tendency of skilled entrepreneurs to innovate in ways that employ other skilled people and by the elasticity of housing supply.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher R. Berry & Edward L. Glaeser, 2005. "The Divergence of Human Capital Levels Across Cities," NBER Working Papers 11617, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11617
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11617.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kremer, M & Maskin, E, 1996. "Wage Inequality and Segregation by Skill," Working papers 96-23, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    2. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    3. Edward Ludwig Glaeser & Albert Saiz, 2003. "The rise of the skilled city," Working Papers 04-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    4. Glaeser, Edward L. & Scheinkman, JoseA. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1995. "Economic growth in a cross-section of cities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 117-143, August.
    5. Rauch James E., 1993. "Productivity Gains from Geographic Concentration of Human Capital: Evidence from the Cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 380-400, November.
    6. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    7. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-95-4 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. John M. Abowd & John Haltiwanger & Julia I. Lane & Kristin Sandusky, 2001. "Within and Between Firm Changes in Human Capital, Technology, and Productivity Preliminary and incomplete," Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Technical Papers 2001-03, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1998. "Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1169-1213.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berry, Christopher R. & Glaeser, Edward L., 2005. "Divergence of Human Capital Levels across Cities," Working Paper Series rwp05-057, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Friso Schlitte, 2012. "Local human capital, segregation by skill, and skill‐specific employment growth," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 91(1), pages 85-106, March.
    3. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    4. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    5. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    6. Moretti, Enrico, 2011. "Local Labor Markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 14, pages 1237-1313, Elsevier.
    7. Todd Gabe & Jaison Abel & Adrienne Ross & Kevin Stolarick, 2012. "Knowledge in Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(6), pages 1179-1200, May.
    8. Mario Polèse, 2005. "Cities and National Economic Growth: A Reappraisal," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(8), pages 1429-1451, July.
    9. repec:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201512111472 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Vernon Henderson, J., 2007. "Understanding knowledge spillovers," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 497-508, July.
    11. Südekum Jens, 2010. "Human Capital Externalities and Growth of High- and Low-Skilled Jobs," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(1), pages 92-114, February.
    12. Jaison Abel & Todd Gabe, 2011. "Human Capital and Economic Activity in Urban America," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(8), pages 1079-1090.
    13. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_027 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Christopher H. Wheeler, 2005. "Cities, Skills, and Inequality," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 329-353, June.
    16. repec:zbw:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201512111472 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Roger R. Stough, 2012. "Introduction – Human Capital and Agglomeration," Chapters, in: Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Roger R. Stough (ed.), The Regional Economics of Knowledge and Talent, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2016. "Wissensintensive Unternehmensdienste, Wissens-Spillovers und regionales Wachstum. Teilprojekt 3: Zur Standortstruktur von wissensintensiven Unternehmensdiensten – Fakten, Bestimmungsgründe, regionalpo," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 59427, March.
    19. Jaison R. Abel & Ishita Dey & Todd M. Gabe, 2012. "Productivity And The Density Of Human Capital," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 562-586, October.
    20. Jørn Rattsø & Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2011. "Accumulation of education and regional income growth: Limited human capital effects in Norway," Working Paper Series 11211, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    21. Bibhudutta Panda, 2017. "Schooling and productivity growth: evidence from a dual growth accounting application to U.S. states," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 193-221, December.
    22. Suzanne Kok, 2013. "Returns to Communication in Specialised and Diversified US Cities," CPB Discussion Paper 236.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    23. Michael Storper, 2010. "Why Does a City Grow? Specialisation, Human Capital or Institutions?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(10), pages 2027-2050, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J0 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11617. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.