On aggregating human capital across heterogeneous cohorts

Based on a general framework for computing the aggregate human capital stock under heterogeneity across population cohorts, the paper derives the “true” functional relationship between the aggregate human capital stock, average years of schooling, and average work experience. Under the scenarios considered here, the macro-Mincer (log-linear) functional relationship between these variables is obtained only in cases which are inconsistent with heterogeneity or based on empirically implausible demographic survival laws. Our numerical results indicate that the macro-Mincer equation is nevertheless an empirically reasonable approximation of the true relationship, at least under standard calibrations.