Human Capital and Genetic Diversity

Sequeira, Tiago and Santos, Marcelo and Ferreira-Lopes, Alexandra (2013): Human Capital and Genetic Diversity.

Abstract

The determinants of human capital have been studied sparsely in the literature. Although there is a huge literature on the determinants of schooling linked with the quality of schooling, there are not many contributions that explore the deep determinants of investment in, quantity and quality of human capital. This paper investigates the relationship between human capital and the ancestral genetic diversity of populations. It highlights a strong hump-shaped relationship between genetic diversity and human capital. This means that some of the human capital achievements nowadays may root to the genetic diversity mostly determined many centuries ago. Results are robust to the introduction of several controls, to a consideration of a proxy for human capital in 1500 and to IV estimation.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: human capital; genetic diversity; determinants of development; determinants of human capital.
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I25 - Education and Economic Development; N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations > N10 - General, International, or Comparative; N - Economic History > N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy > N30 - General, International, or Comparative; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O10 - General; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O5 - Economywide Country Studies > O50 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z10 - General

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