German University Professors’ salaries in the 20th Century. A Relative Income Approach
Hesse Jan-Otmar
Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, 2013, vol. 54, issue 1, 111-127
Abstract:
This article presents a new estimate for the income of German university professors in the 20th century, using university archives as its main source. With these figures we reject the decline-perspective that has been predominant in the literature, influenced especially by Fritz K. Ringer’s book. We compare the professors’ salaries to those in leading occupations in private business, as well as state bureaucracy and find that relative income level developed in a similar fashion up to the 1970s. The 1970s were identified as a crucial turning point, as university professors started to fall behind their comparative social groups in alternative job markets. Making use of the literature on relative income, the article suggests the university professors changed their group of comparison in questions of remuneration during the course of the 20th century, so that the decreasing internal income-inequality affected their well-being more than the increasing gap to salaries outside universities.
Keywords: German Economic History; History of Labour market; history of science; Income Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1524/jbwg.2013.0007 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jbwige:v:54:y:2013:i:1:p:111-127:n:7
DOI: 10.1524/jbwg.2013.0007
Access Statistics for this article
Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook is currently edited by Dieter Ziegler
More articles in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().