So what about the distribution of human capital within metropolitan regions: Does it matter? With the help of my statistically savvy colleague Charlotta Mellander and our team at the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), I decided to take a look. We developed a simple way to begin to get at this question of the distribution of human capital within metropolitan areas. Basically, we compared data on the level of human capital (the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree and above) in the metro as a whole to the human-capital level in its primary urban center or central city. Fortunately, a nice data series on both metro and city-level human capital is readily available from the Brookings Institution's State of Metropolitan America Indicators series. We used these data to generate a series of maps, build a simple measure of the ratio of central-city to metro-human capital, and ultimately to generate a scattergraph which enables us to see the pattern of central-city and metro human capital across the country.





The first map (above), prepared by the MPI's Zara Matheson, shows human capital by city. Washington, D.C. is first with a whopping 58 percent of adults holding a bachelor's degree or above. Five additional cities have human capital levels that exceed 50 percent - Raleigh-Cary (52.4 percent), Seattle (52.1 percent), San Francisco (51.3 percent), Madison (51 percent), and Boston (50.5 percent). Rounding out the top 10 are Atlanta (46.1 percent), Charleston (45.3 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (43.7 percent), and Austin (43.6 percent).

On the other hand, the city with the lowest level of human capital is Detroit, where fewer than 12 percent of adults hold a college degree, almost five times less than Washington, D.C., the country's leading city. Most of the cities with low levels of human capital are de-industrialized cities of the Frostbelt that have faced high levels of out-migration: Youngstown (12.4 percent), Cleveland (14.3 percent), Allentown (15.3 percent), Dayton (16.8 percent), and Toledo (17.4 percent), along with two California cities - Stockton (15.8 percent) and Modesto (17.6 percent) - and two New England communities - Hartford, Connecticut (16.7 percent) and Springfield, Massachusetts (17.5 percent).





The second map (above) shows the human capital levels by metro. Again, greater Washington, D.C. tops the list (48.6 percent), followed by Bridgeport-Stamford (47 percent), San Francisco (45.8 percent), San Jose (Silicon Valley, 41.4 percent), Boston (50.5 percent), Raleigh (52.4 percent), Madison (51 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (39.7 percent), Austin (39.3 percent), and Denver (38.9 percent). Seven cities rank in the top 10 on both the central city and metropolitan lists: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Raleigh, Madison, Minneapolis, and Austin all appear twice.