Full Citation
Title: Education and Human Capital in American Economic History
Citation Type: Book, Section
Publication Year: 2018
ISBN: 9780190937065
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Abstract: The American economy has been profoundly influenced by the evolution of educational institutions and the American human capital stock. From colonial times to the present, the schooling of Americans not only has helped shape the trajectory of the economy, but also has been shaped by that trajectory in what Goldin and Katz (2009) describe as a race between education and technology. The unique public, decentralized nature of school provision in the United States has set the country apart from other Western nations, allowing the country to be a leader in terms of education for much of its history, while leading to issues of inequality in schooling resources in recent decades. The history of school provision and attendance has taught us much about the sources of regional and racial gaps in socioeconomic outcomes and has highlighted the critical role that educational institutions play in either maintaining or eliminating those gaps. It has also offered evidence of the evolving nature of the household, the complex relationships between childhood health and adult outcomes, and even the nature of the American political process. While economic historians have exploited the rich educational history of the United States to yield unique insights related to the nature of technological change, political processes, discrimination, household resource allocation, and a variety of other topics, there remain many unanswered questions. New questions are generated from the results of each new study, and new data sources are consistently being unearthed and digitized, allowing economic historians to empirically study both questions about the evolution of the American economy and issues in the modern education, labor, and growth literatures that were previously deemed untestable.
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Authors: Parman, John, M
Editors: Cain, Louis, P; Fishback, Price, V; Rhode, Paul, W
Pages: 401-424
Volume Title: The Oxford Handbook of American Economic History
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publisher Location: Oxford, England, UK
Volume: 1
Edition:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other, Population Data Science
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