Human Capital Formation During the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the use of Steam Engines

Alexandra de Pleijt (), Alessandro Nuvolari and Jacob Weisdorf

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2020, vol. 18, issue 2, 829-889

Abstract: We examine the effect of technical change on human capital formation during England's Industrial Revolution. Using the number of steam engines installed by 1800 as a synthetic indicator of technological change and occupational statistics to measure working skills (using HISCLASS), we establish a positive correlation between the use of steam engines and the share of skilled workers at the county level. We use exogenous variation in carboniferous rock strata (containing coal to fuel the engines) to show that the effect was causal. While technological change stimulated the formation of working skills, it had an overall negative effect on the formation of primary education, captured by literacy and school enrolment rates. It also led to higher gender inequality in literacy.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvz006 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Human Capital Formation during the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Use of Steam Engines (2018)
Working Paper: Human Capital Formation during the First Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Use of Steam Engines (2016)
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:oup:jeurec:v:18:y:2020:i:2:p:829-889.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().