How Large is the Stock Component of Human Capital?

Mark Huggett and Greg Kaplan

No 21238, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the value of an individual’s human capital and the associated return on human capital using U.S. data on male earnings and financial asset returns. We find that (1) the value of human capital is far below the value implied by discounting earnings at the risk-free rate and (2) the stock component of the value of human capital is smaller than the bond component at all ages. The stock component averages less than 35 percent of the value of human capital at each age.

JEL-codes: D91 E21 G12 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-mac
Note: AP EFG LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Mark Huggett & Greg Kaplan, 2016. "How large is the stock component of human capital?," Review of Economic Dynamics, vol 22, pages 21-51.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21238.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Large is the Stock Component of Human Capital? (2016)
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:nbr:nberwo:21238

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21238

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).