Structural Change, Work Tasks and Urbanization in Early Modern England

Taylor Aucoin (), David Chilosi, Justin Colson (), Mark Hailwood (), Patrick Wallis () and Jane Whittle ()
Additional contact information
Taylor Aucoin: University of Edinburgh, https://edwebprofiles.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-taylor-aucoin
Justin Colson: Institute of Historical Research
Mark Hailwood: University of Bristol, https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Mark-Hailwood-9550e44e-57fe-4a4b-912a-71aeb1fc7d13/
Patrick Wallis: London School of Economics, https://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/People/Faculty-and-teachers/Wallis/Professor-Patrick-Wallis
Jane Whittle: University of Exeter, https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/socialinequality/researchers/janewhittle/

No 39, Working Papers from Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge

Abstract: This article unites evidence of male occupations from probate records with a new dataset of work tasks from court depositions to re-estimate economic structural change in early modern England. Urbanization rates have long been used to measure the latter, while more recent research has tracked sectoral shares of the economy via occupational data. Both approaches suggest pronounced decline in agriculture and rise in industry, yet questions remain. By-employment may have muted sectoral change; urbanization did not necessarily signal non-agricultural activity. By factoring in the constituent tasks of occupations and locales into measures previously based on occupations alone, we reveal much higher levels of work in services, growing structural differences between town and countryside, and significant drops in primary sector participation

JEL-codes: N33 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01-27, Revised 2025-01-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Cambridge Working Paper in Economic & Social History, No. 39

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/a74e75 ... a5250f2df83/download None. (application/pdf)
None.

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:cmh:wpaper:39

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Guillaume Proffit () and Alexis Litvine ().