Abstract:
Education, being one main way of human capital formation, plays a
crucial role in socio-economic development. For a balanced regional
development, similar to other resources, formation of human capital in all
regions of a country is essential. The paper deals with how the human
capital formation through formal education occurs at the regional level in
Sri Lanka. The methodology, being quantitative, includes descriptive
analysis and ranking of provinces through a composite index on human
capital formation. The study completely depends on institutional and noninstitutional secondary data sources. The results suggest that, among the
provinces, the disparity in human capital formation through education is
significant. The Western Province is ranked at the first place while the
Eastern Province gets the last. North-Western Province and the Southern
Province are also outstanding while the position of Uva and Central
Provinces are not satisfactory. In addition, the study finds that there are
gender-related disparities also in the formation of human capital at the
regional level.
