Human Capital Accumulation in France at the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century: Lessons from the Guizot Inquiry

Magali Jaoul-Grammare and Charlotte Le Chapelain ()
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Charlotte Le Chapelain: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CLHDPP - Centre lyonnais d'Histoire du droit et de la pensée politique - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon

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Abstract: Building on the results of the Guizot inquiry, carried out in autumn 1833 on the initiative of François Guizot, the minister of public instruction, this article examines the process of human capital accumulation in the early nineteenth-century France. We rely on an original measure of human capital—student progress—to highlight the high level of heterogeneity in human capital accumulation in this period. We identify two types of schools in the French educational landscape: first, large schools, well-endowed in human and material resources, which contributed a great deal to human capital accumulation, and, second, small schools, characterised by some degree of amateurism and improvisation, which weakly contributed to human capital formation. We note that the use of literacy rates or school enrolment rates can be misleading with regard to the estimation of French human capital endowments, laying emphasis instead on the heterogeneity in the French educational landscape at the dawn of the nineteenth century, as the country embarked on the process of industrialisation.

Keywords: Guizot inquiry; Human capital accumulation; France; Nineteenth century (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-01
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Published in Claude Diebolt; Auke Rijpma; Sarah Carmichael; Selin Dilli; Charlotte Störmer. Cliometrics of the Family, Springer, pp.237-259, 2019, 978-3-319-99480-2. ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-99480-2_10⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02611116

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-99480-2_10

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