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Emergy Evaluation of Educational Attainment in the United States
Citation:
CAMPBELL, D. E., H. LU, AND K. Kolb. Emergy Evaluation of Educational Attainment in the United States. In Proceedings, Emergy Synthesis 6, Theory and Applications of the Emergy Method, Gainesville, FL, January 14 - 16, 2010. Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainsville, FL, 483-500, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
This is paper is significant because for the first time we provide a quasi-independent measure of the emergy value of “know-how” or the information delivered through human service. Therefore, it serves as the basis for reconciling the accounts kept as energy and dollars for environmental accounting using emergy and opens the way to the further emergy evaluations of social systems.
Description:
The emergy of educational attainment in the United States was quantified over the period for which the necessary data were available, i.e., 1948 to 2006. We propose that the portion of the knowledge in educational attainment delivered by the active workforce be considered as part of the emergy basis for a nation. Under this new model, the emergy supplied annually from the information storage of “know-how” is between 44 and 72% of the emergy used to support the nation, depending on the assumptions used for the number of hours worked, annually. The pattern of the relationship between the emergy used from know-how and that used from environmental sources, i.e., energy, materials, renewable sources, etc. reflects the state transition that corresponds to the timing of the growth of the information age, i.e., computing and the internet. Quantifying the emergy of knowledge contributing to social and economic processes of the nation opens the way to better emergy analyses of social processes. In addition, this study provides the missing information needed to attain closure of the emergy and money accounts used in environmental accounting.