Human capital inequality and economic growth: evidence with sub-national data from Thailand

Md. Nasir Uddin () and Saran Sarntisart

International Journal of Social Economics, 2019, vol. 46, issue 7, 938-956

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to find the effects of human capital inequality on economic growth. Design/methodology/approach - Thailand Labor Force Survey has been used to generate provincial average years of schooling and Gini coefficient of years of schooling for the years 1995‒2012. Econometric techniques have been employed to identify the effects of human capital inequality on economic growth. Findings - Economic growth is inversely affected by the distribution of human capital in Thailand. The coefficient of human capital inequality suggests that if Gini coefficient increases by 0.01 points, gross provincial product (GPP) decreases by about 2 percentage points in the long run. However, the effect of average years of schooling in GPP is not significant. Research limitations/implications - There is a lack of strong theoretical background for the relationship between human capital inequality and economic growth to support the empirical study. Practical implications - The findings of the study help to design and evaluate education policies in developing countries like Thailand and other low- and middle-income countries. Originality/value - This paper is among the first attempts to analyze the effect of human capital inequality on economic growth with sub-national level annual data. In addition, it considers cross sectional dependence in panel model.

Keywords: Cointegration; Economic growth; Cross sectional dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:eme:ijsepp:ijse-07-2018-0368

DOI: 10.1108/IJSE-07-2018-0368

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().