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Human Capital Formation, Life Expectancy, and the Process of Development
Abstract
We provide a unified theory of the transition in income, life expectancy, education, and population size from a nondeveloped environment to sustained growth. Individuals optimally trade off the time cost of education with its lifetime returns. Initially, low longevity implies a prohibitive cost for human capital formation for most individuals. A positive feedback loop between human capital and increasing longevity, triggered by endogenous skill-biased technological progress, eventually provides sufficient returns for widespread education. The transition is not based on scale effects and induces population growth despite unchanged fertility. A simulation illustrates that the dynamics fit historical data patterns.
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Cites
On the mechanics of economic development
Lucas, R. E. (1988) · Journal of Monetary Economics · doi:10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7 · Cited by 24,085
Endogenous Technological Change
Romer, P. M. (1990) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261725 · Cited by 17,711
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Ageing, government budgets, retirement, and growth
Gonzalez-Eiras, M., & Niepelt, D. (2012) · European Economic Review · doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2011.05.007 · Cited by 103
Why it pays off to pay us well: The impact of basic research on economic growth and welfare
Prettner, K., & Werner, K. (2016) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2016.03.001 · Cited by 80
Health and economic growth: Reconciling the micro and macro evidence
Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., Kotschy, R., Prettner, K., & Schünemann, J. (2024) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106575 · Cited by 75
Sleep, health, and human capital: Evidence from daylight saving time
Jin, L., & Ziebarth, N. R. (2020) · Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2019.12.003 · Cited by 68
Metadata
- Authors
- Cervellati, M., & Sunde, U.
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2005-11-01
- Volume
- 95
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1653-1672
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2107256585
- Cited by
- 426
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 37.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.