Annual Estimates of Human Capital by State: 1976-2000

Aggregate and average human capital per worker in each of the 50 United States are estimated using microdata from the Annual Demographic File (ADF) and outgoing Rotation Groups (ORG) of the Current Population Survey for 1976-2000 and 1979-2000, respectively, and are compared to one another and to recent estimates from Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1997, 2000). The growth-rate patterns produced substantial mixing in the state distribution of average human capital per worker and unconditional beta convergence. Aggregate human capital growth rates are dominated by workforce scale effects that strongly favor southern and western regions.