Human Capital and State-Level Economic Growth : What is the Contribution of Schooling?

In this paper, we set out to quantify the magnitude of the positive empirical relationship between schooling and regional growth. We apply the growth empirics method of Mankiw et al. (Q. J. Econ. 107:407–438, 1992) to a panel of US states. We improve upon the existing regional growth literature by (i) removing transfer payments from personal income, (ii) deflating non-transfer income by individual state price indices, and (iii) using a system GMM estimator. We estimate an education share of income of 20–25%, which corresponds to estimates from the growth accounting literature