ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Skill dependencies uncover nested human capital.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Scaling laws for function diversity and specialization across socioeconomic and biological complex systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Quantifying the influence of vocational education and training with text embedding and similarity-based networks.PloS one · 2025Article
- The relationship between structural characteristics of long-term care institutions and their initial operating budgets.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The dynamic resilience of urban labour networks.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Modern economies require increasingly diverse and specialized skills, many of which depend on the acquisition of other skills first. Here we analyse US survey data to reveal a nested structure within skill portfolios, where the direction of dependency is inferred from asymmetrical conditional probabilities-occupations require one skill conditional on another. This directional nature suggests that advanced, specific skills and knowledge are often built upon broader, fundamental ones. We examine 70 million job transitions to show that human capital development and career progression follow this structured pathway in which skills more aligned with the nested structure command higher wage premiums, require longer education and are less likely to be automated. These disparities are evident across genders and racial/ethnic groups, explaining long-term wage penalties. Finally, we find that this nested structure has become even more pronounced over the past two decades, indicating increased barriers to upward job mobility.
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Registered trials
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