Economically relevant human capital or multi-purpose consumption good? Book ownership in pre-modern Württemberg

We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population German women men between 1610 1900. Although was very high from early date, it associated with literacy, gender, urbanization, wealth in ways inconsistent its having registered economically relevant capital. The people owned were overwhelmingly religious, elsewhere pre-modern Europe. People consumed multifarious purposes, many them non-economic. In this economy, not good the at large, which creates doubt about their use purpose more generally.