Despite the existence of a large urban-rural education gap in many countries, little attention has been paid whether cities enjoy a comparative advantage in the production of human capital. Using Dutch administrative data, this paper finds that conditional on family characteristics and cognitive ability, children who grow up in urban regions consistently attain higher levels of human capital compared to children in rural regions. The elasticity of university attendance with respect to population density is 0.07, which is robust across a wide variety of specifications. Hence, the paper highlights an alternative channel to explain the rise of the city. .

中文翻译：

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城乡教育差距：城市真的让我们更聪明吗？

尽管许多国家都存在着较大的城乡教育差距，但城市在人力资本生产方面是否具有比较优势却鲜有关注。本文使用荷兰的行政数据发现，在家庭特征和认知能力的条件下，与农村地区的儿童相比，在城市地区长大的儿童始终获得更高的人力资本水平。大学出勤率相对于人口密度的弹性为 0.07，在各种规格中都是稳健的。因此，本文重点介绍了另一种解释城市崛起的渠道。.