Human capital formation from occupations: the ‘deskilling hypothesis’ revisited

Alexandra de Pleijt () and Jacob Weisdorf

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, 2017, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: We use HISCLASS to code the occupational titles of over 30,000 English male workers according to the skill content of their work. We then track the evolution of the sampled working skills across three centuries of English history, from 1550 to 1850. We observe a modest rise in the share of ‘high-quality workmen’ deemed necessary by Mokyr and others to facilitate the Industrial Revolution, including machine erectors and operators. But we also find remarkable growth in the share of unskilled workers, rising from 20 % in the late sixteenth century to nearly 40 % in the early nineteenth century, caused mainly by falling shares of semi-skilled, blue-collar workers. Close inspection of the occupational structures within the main sectors of production suggests that deskilling occurred in agriculture and industry alike, prompted by land concentration in agriculture and workshop-to-factory changes in industry.

Keywords: Deskilling; HISCLASS; Human capital; Industrial Revolution; Occupations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 N33 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11698-016-0140-y (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to journal subscribers

Related works:
Journal Article: Human capital formation from occupations: the ‘deskilling hypothesis’ revisited (2017)
Working Paper: Human Capital Formation from Occupations: The ‘Deskilling Hypothesis’ Revisited (2015)
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:afc:cliome:v:11:y:2017:i:1:p:1-30

Access Statistics for this article

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History is currently edited by Claude Diebolt, Dora Costa and Jean-Luc Demeulemeester

More articles in Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History from Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().