The Influence of High Skill Agglomeration on Skill Sorting: Evidence from China Tertiary Education
31 May 2022, CGHE webinar
Dr. Po YANG, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China
Ms. Yangxi LIU, Yenching Academy of Peking University, China
Human capital agglomeration is critical for urban economic growth. However, China’s domestic migration has been declining since 2010. There are anecdotal evidences that the latest Chinese tertiary education expansion has accelerated high skill agglomeration in cities, but its impact on skill sorting among cities is largely unknown.
In this talk, based on data from China’s 6th national census in 2010 and 1% sampling of national population in 2015, we discuss how China’s tertiary expansion in 1999 has reshaped the spatial agglomeration of urban human capital in 2010, which in turn influenced the prefecture cities’ inflow of domestic migrants from 2010 to 2015. Our mechanism analysis show that the cost of urban living and the institutional requirement for urban settlement have reduced city’s inflow of medium and low-skilled human capital. Meanwhile, the excess supply of local college graduates and the lower per capita medical resources after the tertiary expansion also decreased the inflow of high-skilled human capital.
The talk will add to current understanding of the potential negative externalities related to high skill agglomeration in China, and provide a new direction for future research and policies on promoting effective human capital spatial allocation.