Local Human Capital Index in the South Transdanubian Region

Abstract

The authors addressed the spatial analysis of the human capital of settlements in the South Transdanubian region. It is widely agreed by researchers that especially endogenous regional development relies highly on local assets, among them local human capital. On the other hand there are several indicators in use for measuring spatial allocation of local capital or human capital without a consensus among researchers. Human capital has already been studied from several aspects and reviewing these studies made us confident to work on the topic further. The authors focused on the feasible development of a complex indicator which reflects the spatial allocation of human capital potential in the South Transdanubian region in order to identify the settlements with pulling effect on their surrounding settlements and those areas which are either outliers or negatively affect their neighbourhoods. It was found that local human capital of the Southern Transdanubian settlements had to some extent clear spatial patterns, which is mainly induced by the role of central settlements. Although in some cases the pulling effect of these bigger cities is not unambiguous, not all of their neighbouring settlements benefit. On the other hand, the majority of the settlements does not belong to either positive or negative clusters, and only a few cases were seen as outliers, too.