Evolution of living standards and human capital in China in the 18-20th centuries: Evidences from real wages, age-heaping, and anthropometrics

Joerg Baten, Debin Ma, Stephen Morgan and Qing Wang

Explorations in Economic History, 2010, vol. 47, issue 3, 347-359

Abstract: This article mobilizes and integrates both existing and new time series data on real wages, physical heights and age-heaping to examine the long-term trend of living standards and human capital for China during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Our findings confirm the existence of a substantial gap in living standards between China and North-western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They also reveal a sustained decline in living standards and human capital at least in South China from the mid-nineteenth century followed by a recovery in the early twentieth century. However, comparative examination of age-heaping data shows that the level of Chinese human capital was relatively high by world standard during this period. We make a preliminary exploration of the historical implication of our findings.

Keywords: China; Standard; of; living; Human; capital; Real; wages; Height; Numeracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:exehis:v:47:y:2010:i:3:p:347-359

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