Human Capital Spending, Inequality, and Growth in Middle-Income Asia

Michael Abrigo, Sang-Hyop Lee and Donghyun Park

No 529, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: Asia’s rapid population aging fortifies the case for strengthening human capital investments. Further, the experience of the newly industrialized economies suggests that human capital investments will be a vital ingredient of the transition from middle income to high income. Those investments can also affect equity and public finances. In this paper, we use data from the National Transfer Accounts to empirically analyze the effect of human capital investment in Asian countries on economic growth, inequality, and fiscal balance. Our empirical evidence suggests that human capital investments have a positive effect on labor productivity and, hence, output. The positive effect is stronger for poorer households and, hence, beneficial for equity. We also find that such investments can generate sufficient tax revenues to improve the fiscal balance. Overall, our evidence points to a positive effect of human capital on growth, equity, and fiscal balance in Asia.

Keywords: Asia; fiscal balance; growth; human capital; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I24 I25 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2017-12-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.adb.org/publications/human-capital-spe ... h-middle-income-asia Full text (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Human Capital Spending, Inequality, and Growth in Middle-Income Asia (2018)
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:ris:adbewp:0529

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Orlee Velarde ().