The Production and Stock of College Graduates for U.S. States

John Winters

No 8730, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The stock of human capital in an area is important for regional economic growth and development. However, highly educated workers are often quite mobile and there is a concern that public investments in college graduates may not benefit the state if the college graduates leave the state after finishing their education. This paper examines the relationship between the production of college graduates from a state and the stock of college graduates residing in the state using microdata from the decennial census and American Community Survey. I examine the relationship across states and across cohorts within states. The descriptive analysis suggests that the relationship between the production and stock of college graduates has increased over time and is nearly proportional in recent years. I also employ instrumental variables methods to estimate causal effects. The preferred IV results yield an average point estimate for the production-stock relationship of 0.52, but the effect likely decreases with age.

Keywords: migration; human capital; college graduates; higher education policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I25 J24 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - revised version published as 'Do higher college graduation rates increase local education levels?' in: Papers in Regional Science, 2018, 97 (3), 617 - 638

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp8730.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Production and Stock of College Graduates for U.S. States (2015)
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:iza:izadps:dp8730

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().