1 option
Life-Cycle Human Capital Accumulation Across Countries: Lessons From U.S. Immigrants / David Lagakos, Benjamin Moll, Tommaso Porzio, Nancy Qian, Todd Schoellman.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Lagakos, David.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21914.
- NBER working paper series no. w21914
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Other Title:
- Life-Cycle Human Capital Accumulation Across Countries
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.
- Summary:
- How much does life-cycle human capital accumulation vary across countries? This paper seeks to answer this question by studying U.S. immigrants, who come from a wide variety of countries but work in a common labor market. We document that returns to potential experience among U.S. immigrants are higher on average for workers coming from rich countries than for those coming from poor countries. To understand this fact we build a model of life-cycle human capital accumulation that features three potential theories, working respectively through cross-country differences in: selection, skill loss, and human capital accumulation. To distinguish between theories, we use new data on the characteristics of immigrants and non-migrants from a large set of countries. We conclude that the most likely theory is that immigrants from poor countries accumulate relatively less human capital in their birth countries before migrating. Our findings imply that life cycle human capital stocks are on average much larger in rich countries than poor countries.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- January 2016.
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.