Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital

Joerg Baten, Dorothee Crayen and Brian A'Hearn

No 7277, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Age data frequently display excess frequencies at attractive numbers, such as multiples of five. We use this "age heaping" to measure cognitive ability in quantitative reasoning, or "numeracy". We construct a database of age heaping estimates with exceptional geographic and temporal coverage, and demonstrate a robust correlation of literacy and numeracy, where both can be observed. Extending the temporal and geographic range of our knowledge of human capital, we show that Western Europe had already diverged from the East and reached high numeracy levels by 1600, long before the rise of mass schooling or the onset of industrialization.

Keywords: Human capital; Age heaping; Literacy; Long-term growth; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I20 N13 O14 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm, nep-mac and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (147)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7277 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital (2009)
Working Paper: Quantifying quantitative literacy: Age heaping and the history of human capital (2006)
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:cpr:ceprdp:7277

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7277

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().