TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mulligan,Casey B.
AU  - Sala-i-Martin,Xavier
TI  - Measuring Aggregate Human Capital
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5016
PY  - 1995
Y2  - February 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5016
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5016.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Casey B. Mulligan
University of Chicago
Department of Economics
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-9017
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: c-mulligan@uchicago.edu

Xavier Sala-i-Martin
Department of Economics
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, 1005
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-7055
Fax: 212/854-8059
E-Mail: xs23@columbia.edu
AB  - In this paper we construct a set of human capital indexes for the states of the United States for each Census year starting in 1940.  In order to do so, we propose a new methodology for the construction of index numbers in panel data sets.  Our method is based on an optimal approach by which we choose the 'best' set index numbers by minimizing the expected estimation error subject to some search constraints. Some of the empirical findings are that the stock of human capital in the United States grew twice as rapidly as the average years of schooling and that human capital inequality across states went up during the 1980s (while the dispersion of schooling actually fell).  We conclude that using the average years of schooling for the empirical study of existing growth models may be misleading.
ER  -