EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Capital, Productivity, and Human Welfare Since 1870

Daniel Gallardo-Albarrán

A chapter in Handbook of Cliometrics, 2024, pp 2023-2048 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter reviews the proximate factors of human welfare since 1870 by discussing two strands of the economic history literature and identifying various key areas for further research. The first strand focuses on level accounting studies that attribute between-country economic inequality to differences in capital and productivity. I argue that most income gaps in the late nineteenth century were due to variation in physical and human capital endowments, while widening productivity differentials account for most of rising cross-country inequality during the twentieth century. These patterns are likely explained by waves of skill- and capital-biased technological innovation, but additional research is needed to underpin these findings in, at least, three ways: capital and income series should be deflated by appropriate price indices, samples should include many more lower-income countries and methodologies could explore more realistic production functions. The second strand of the literature I review considers the measurement of long-run human development. Three approaches are popular among practitioners (capability, data-driven and utility frameworks), although there is still no consensus on which one to use. This makes it challenging to interpret broad trends in human welfare, as different well-being indices show contrasting patterns of growth and inequality. I argue that the field needs a more solid theoretical foundation to guide our choice of measurement frameworks. In this respect, utility-based indicators may be especially useful, as they address relevant issues raised in the literature, such as how to weight different dimensions, how individuals trade-off between them, and how to interpret the results.

Keywords: Capital; Economic history; Human development; Productivity; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Capital, Productivity, and Human Welfare since 1870 (2023) Downloads
Working Paper: Capital, Productivity, and Human Welfare since 1870 (2023) Downloads
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:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-35583-7_88

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031355837

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-35583-7_88

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-35583-7_88