City Air Pollution and Talents Mobility

The “scramble for talents” is intensifying among China cities. High human capital groups are more sensitive to air pollution. This paper uses the college enrollment scores data, urban air pollution data and city statistics data from 2006 to 2018. We find that urban PM2. 5 significantly reduces the college enrollment scores. It shows that urban air pollution inhibits the willingness of university student-to-be. This finding holds under the endogeneity treatment and various of robustness tests. The results of mechanism analysis indicate that urban PM2. 5 reduces the attractiveness of cities and colleges. Specifically, urban PM2. 5 inhibits foreign investment firms inflow and stimulates service industry employees and college teachers outflow. Further analysis shows that the negative impact of air pollution on college enrollment scores is long-term. We draw conclusions that air pollution inhibits talent inflow and stimulates talent outflow. The main conclusions of the research have three effects. First, it expands the research boundary of air pollution, talent flow and college entrance examination. Second, it provides a new research perspective for talent flow and regional human capital drain. Third, it could help local governments to formulate policies about talent introduction and environment protection.