Demographic change, human capital, and economic growth in Korea
Jong-Suk Han and
Jong-Wha Lee
Japan and the World Economy, 2020, vol. 53, issue C
Abstract:
We construct a measure of human capital using micro datasets on labor composition of age, gender, education, and wage rate and analyze its role in economic growth for the Korean economy. Over the past three decades, human capital has grown steadily at about 1% per year, contrasting to a continuously declining trend of total work-hours. This growth has been driven by the rise of better-educated baby-boom cohorts. A growth accounting exercise shows that human capital contributes significantly to economic growth; it accounted for 0.5% points of annual GDP growth over the period. Human capital is projected to remain a major growth factor over the next two decades as the increase in educational attainment continues. Increased employment rate of elderly or female workers reduces the aggregate human capital growth while increasing the available labor. Polices to improve human capital of female or elderly workers help to increase aggregate human capital growth.
Keywords: Aging; Demographic change; Education; Human capital; Growth; Training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O47 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0922142519300428
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Demographic change, human capital, and economic growth in Korea (2019) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:japwor:v:53:y:2020:i:c:s0922142519300428
DOI: 10.1016/j.japwor.2019.100984
Access Statistics for this article
Japan and the World Economy is currently edited by Robert Dekle and Yasushi Hamao
More articles in Japan and the World Economy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().