Recent proposal for the estimation of household human capital

Dagum and Slottje (2000) estimated household Human Capital (HC) as a Latent Variable (LV) proposing its monetary estimation by means of an actuarial approach. This paper introduces an improved method for the estimation of household HC as LV by means of formative and reflective indicators in agreement with the accepted economic definition of HC. The monetary HC distribution, estimated for Italian (2000) and US (2004) household, is used in a recursive causal model to explore the role of HC in macroeconomy.