The Influence of Urban Amenities, Economic Opportunities and City Size on the Spatial Distribution of Highly Educated Workers in China

A highly educated workforce is an important driving factor for urban innovation and development. A better understanding of spatial patterns and location determinants of highly educated workers is valuable for designing policies to attract them. The existing literature has investigated the impacts of economic variables and urban amenities on the patterns of highly educated workers. However, the relationship between urban amenities and highly educated workers needs to be investigated further. Moreover, few studies have examined the impact of urban size on the agglomeration of highly educated workers. Thus, this study employed a spatial analysis method to examine the pattern of highly educated workers across 300 cities in China, based on 2010 census data. We used a negative binomial regression model to identify the determinants of highly educated workers' locations. The results are numerous. First, the size of highly educated workers varied greatly among cities of different ranks, and its rank-size distribution