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The urban rural-education gap: do cities indeed make us smarter?

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  • Raoul van Maarseveen

Abstract

Despite the existence of a large urban-rural education gap in many countries, little attention has been paid whether cities enjoy a comparative advantage in the production of human capital. Using Dutch administrative data, this paper finds that conditional on family characteristics and cognitive ability, children who grow up in urban regions consistently attain higher levels of human capital compared to children in rural regions. The elasticity of university attendance with respect to population density is 0.07, which is robust across a wide variety of specifications. Hence, the paper highlights an alternative channel to explain the rise of the city. .

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  • Raoul van Maarseveen, 2020. "The urban rural-education gap: do cities indeed make us smarter?," CPB Discussion Paper 412, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpb:discus:412
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    2. Onyango, Silas & Zuilkowski, Stephanie Simmons & Kitsao-Wekulo, Patricia & Nkumbula, Nampaka & Utzinger, Jürg & Fink, Günther, 2021. "Relative importance of early childhood development domains for schooling progression: Longitudinal Evidence from the Zambia Early Childhood Development Project," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

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