Smart people of the highly educated sort that economists refer to as “human capital” are key engines of economic growth and development. More and more, they have been clustering in a relative handful of big cities. A recent post by Aaron M. Renn, who blogs as The Urbanophile, charts the changing density of college educated people across U.S. metro areas. His analysis builds on an earlier analysis by Rob Pitingolo (I blogged about it here) which introduced a measure of human capital density.
The chart above, from Renn’s analysis, shows the metros which registered the biggest change in human capital (measured as the share of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher) over the decade spanning 2000 and 2009. New York County, which is Manhattan, registered far and away the largest increase. Renn notes that at first glance this might not seem so surprising, since New York is a big place. But a closer look at the numbers reveals that it is a very big deal indeed: “Frankly, it’s staggering. Manhattan increased its density of people with college degrees by 7,500 people per square mile,” which is more than the total population density of most of the cities in the United States. Kings County (Brooklyn), Queens, and the Bronx have also showed a marked increase in human capital density, clear evidence of greater New York’s resurgence as a talent hub. Talent is increasingly drawn to big, dense cities; Renn’s top ten counties are all in the greater New York, San Francisco, Boston or D.C. areas.
But is this seeming explosion of human capital just an artifact of population growth? In the chart above, Renn plotted each county’s increase in human capital (again adults with a bachelor’s degree and above) as a percentage of its total increase in population. The list of counties is more or less the same, with Manhattan in first place, followed by D.C. The rest of the top ten counties were all in the greater New York, D.C., Boston, or San Francisco areas. All of them added human capital at a rate of 100 to 200 percent of their overall population gain.
America’s economic landscape is increasingly spiky. Talented, highly-skilled and highly educated people are clustering in and around America’s major cities to an extent few would have thought possible a couple decades ago, when suburbs and sprawl were the locations of choice and cities were for the musicians, artistic creatives, and the poor. This kind of clustering, the advantages of which Jane Jacobs described decades ago, is fuelling the revival of the core cities of the Bos-Wash mega-region and San Francisco, and spurring the revival of older urban districts like Brooklyn, which according to an analysis earlier this year by pollster Nate Silver, includes New York City’s most desirable neighborhood, Park Slope.
Despite its many upsides, this urban revival both reflects and reinforces the great economic and social divide which is splitting America by geography as well as by class. Beside the small number of resurgent central cities stand many other once-great cities, including the Rustbelt cities that literally drove American economic might during the early to mid 20th century, that continue to languish and even decline, while the Sunbelt cities of sand have been hit heavily by the housing crash.
Left to its own devices, America’s economic landscape will only get spikier and more uneven, and its political landscape, already being reshaped by the rise of rightwing populism and of the Tea Party movement, ever more polarized. Restoring sustainable economic growth and a more socially and politically cohesive society will require nothing less than new policies and institutions which can channel growth in ways that enable the many benefits of economic clustering while ensuring improving wages and living standards for the broader populace.
December 24th, 2010 at 10:01 am
What about Canada?
December 27th, 2010 at 2:38 am
“Creative? Brainy? This has a lot more to do with housing expense/availability than with intelligence. A BA is like a high school degree used to be…not much of a measure of human capital. Those who do jobs not requiring a BA are still in the SF/NY/Boston regions, but they are commuting in. Precious little to do with being a member of the ‘creative class.’ Silicon Valley/LA/Seattle is more where the pedal hits the metal in that way. This is just density.
December 27th, 2010 at 9:12 am
We need to leverage the educational potential and capacity of all – especially children given demographic trends.
What would help in rural and urbanscapes is a generic conceptual framework for all. Education about health and well-being is vital with self-care essential. The care domains model is a free and accessible resource:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/
Great also for creativity and innovation. Check out the blog for a bibliography and archive of posts. There are four human driven resource pages one per care domain, e.g. POLITICAL:
http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/linksIV.htm
All the best for 2011!
December 30th, 2010 at 10:31 am
ac young,
Whenver the subject of brains being equated to a college degree is brought up, someone invariably mentions that a college degree does not equal smarts. This misses the point. Typically, Bill Gates is cited as an example. The exception, however, proves the rule. (And Gates himself attended Harvard. It is not as if he was high school dropout writing code in his parents garage). Needing to point out that person A has succeeded despite not having a degree demonstrates that for most people, it is beneficial. Furthermore, the trap that many fall into is to highlight individual cases rather than to look at the data in the aggregrate. College degree attainment is a fairly accurate proxy for a region’s economic health. Economically healthy areas have higher levels of college graduates. Compare Seattle with Cleveland, for example. Again, there are examples of INDIVIDUALS withot a college degree who have been very successful, but they are the exception. The clustering of college graduates fuels innovation and entrepreneurship, and spurs ripple effects like increased quality of life (culture, less crime, less strain on social services, etc.) all of which create a more attractive region, creating a positive reinforcing cycle.
I would also point out that a college degree is not today’s equivalent of a high school diploma. Although it is true that it has become a basic prerequisite for success in most professional and creative fields, it is still meaningful. The unemployment rate for college graduates is still much lower than for those with less than a college degree – approximately 5%.