Education and Skills During the First Industrial Revolution in England

Alexandra de Pleijt, Julius Koschnick and Patrick Wallis

No 21279, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We provide evidence that education contributed to England’s Industrial Revolution by increasing upper-tail human capital. Contrary to the prevailing view that schooling was irrelevant to early industrialization, we show that the expansion of schooling lowered barriers to entering apprenticeships in skill-intensive trades. We introduce new parish-level data on 3,000 school foundations, 46,000 charitable bequests, and 350,000 apprenticeship contracts between 1711 and 1805. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design exploiting educational endowments through wills, we show that the expansion of schooling increased apprenticeship training, particularly in occupations requiring reading, writing, and mathematical skills that were crucial for the Industrial Revolution.

Keywords: Education; Skill formation; Human capital; Innovation; Industrial revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 N13 O14 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
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