A Study about Disparities in the Spatial Distribution of Human Capital and their Convergence

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the spatiotemporal evolution and convergence of human capital distributions across the provinces of China from 1990 to 2016. In the results, it is shown that the spatial distribution of human capital of China is unbalanced. The proportion of human capital differs significantly at the provincial level; eastern and western China show significant disparities in human capital proportion, whereas central China has smaller disparities. The geographic density of human capital is high in the eastern provinces and low in the western provinces. Furthermore, it was shown that human capital is rapidly gathering in the eastern region and slowly spreading towards the central region. The economic density of human capital is high in the west and low in the east; as a whole, the economic density of human capital in China is trending downwards over time. The center of human capital is currently located in a southeastern section of central China. However, the center of human capital has been gradually shifting towards the northwest and southwest directions since 2014 and exhibits a significant degree of spatial autocorrelation. In terms of interprovincial human capital disparities, σ-convergence was present between 1990 and 2000 but absent between 2001 and 2016. Conditional β-convergence is present between the provinces; if the provinces may be assumed to have similar or identical economic features, absolute β-convergence will be present between the provinces. Club convergence is present between the central and western provinces, but not the eastern provinces. Government policies at all levels should focus on changing the conditions that affect the steady-state of human capital, so that σ-convergence can ultimately be attained via β-convergence, thus shrinking regional differences in the distribution of human capital. This will optimize the distribution of human capital in China and promote balanced and coordinated regional economy development. This work contributes to the expansion of research areas and methodologies in regional economics and human capital theory. The findings of this work also enrich the literature by providing empirical evidence about the spatial disparities of human capital in China.