Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/126644 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9555
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
There is limited existing evidence justifying the economic case for state education policy. Using newly-developed measures of the human capital of each state that allow for internal migration and foreign immigration, we estimate growth regressions that incorporate worker skills. We find that educational achievement strongly predicts economic growth across U.S. states over the past four decades. Based on projections from our growth models, we show the enormous scope for state economic development through improving the quality of schools. While we consider the impact for each state of a range of educational reforms, an improvement that moves each state to the best-performing state would in the aggregate yield a present value of long-run economic gains of over four times current GDP.
Subjects: 
economic growth
human capital
cognitive skills
schooling
U.S. states
JEL: 
I21
J24
O47
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
523.67 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.