关键词: 人力资本, 人口年龄结构, 年龄别受教育程度, 人口转型, 教育提升

Abstract: Although human capital is fundamental for economic growth and social transformation, there is not yet a consensus on how to estimate this indicator empirically. Based on the distributional characteristics of key parameters estimated from large-scale micro sampling data, this article simulates and forecasts China’s national and provincial human capital stock and per capita human capital by year for the period from 1950 to 2020, following first- order Markov process. After that, the internal mechanism of human capital changes in the past 70 years is investigated from the perspectives of demographic transition and improvement in education. It finds that considerable variation exists between the growth rates of human capital stock obtained through different methods, though they all gradually slow down over time. In the past 70 years, demographic transition has contributed slightly more to the growth of human capital compared with education improvement. The increase in China’s human capital stock comes mainly from the demographic dividend in early years, and increasingly from improvement in education in recent years. Second, there is a prominent gap in educational attainment among provinces, and although considerable improvement has been observed in all provinces, the trajectories are not necessarily similar. Between 1950 and 2020, convergence has been observed among all provinces over time. This paper argues that improving education can be an important approach to further enhance the human capital of China.

Key words: Human Capital, Population Age Structure, Age-specific Education Level, Demographic Transition, Education Improvement