Human Capital and Population Growth in Nonmetropolitan U.S. Counties

John Winters

Economic Development Quarterly, 2011, vol. 25, issue 4, 353-365

Abstract: Researchers have consistently shown that the stock of human capital in an area, measured as the share of the adult population with a college degree, is a strong predictor of future population growth. This article examines this relationship for U.S. nonmetropolitan counties and posits that student migration for higher education may play an important role. Students often move to an area for college and then stay in the area after their education is complete, causing the area’s educated population to grow. Empirical evidence suggests that student migration explains nearly all the greater in-migration to highly educated nonmetropolitan counties. Implications for nonmetropolitan brain drain are discussed.

Keywords: population growth; migration; human capital; nonmetropolitan counties; college (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242411418221 (text/html)

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:sae:ecdequ:v:25:y:2011:i:4:p:353-365

DOI: 10.1177/0891242411418221

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development Quarterly
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().