Human capital quality and the regional economic growth: Evidence from China

Yi Zhang, Sanjay Kumar, Xianhai Huang and Yiming Yuan

Journal of Asian Economics, 2023, vol. 86, issue C

Abstract: China's economic development has advanced from a high-speed to a high-quality growth stage in recent years. The optimization and upgrading of the economic structure require high-quality human capital to support an innovation-driven economy. In this paper, a general equilibrium model of human capital (Xiang & Yeaple, 2018) is applied to estimate the cognitive and non-cognitive productivities based on Chinese provincial-level macro-data and individual labor's micro-data from 2008 to 2017. The weighted power mean of cognitive and non-cognitive productivities helps calculate the provincial-level human capital quality index (HCQI), which provides a realistic estimate of human capital quality. We find that the improvement of the HCQI leads to convergence in economic growth in China's provinces. HCQI can help explain the differences in economic growth levels in different regions of China. Our study provides a constructive step in understanding cognitive and non-cognitive abilities and HCQI in China, which could help guide education investment policy in China and its provinces.

Keywords: Cognitive human capital; Non-cognitive human capital; Human capital quality index (HCQI); Regional differences; Economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 I21 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:asieco:v:86:y:2023:i:c:s1049007823000131

DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101593

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