Evolution of living standards and human capital in China in the 18ヨ20th centuries: Evidences from real wages, age-heaping, and anthropometrics

نویسندگان

  • Joerg Baten
  • Debin Ma
  • Stephen Morgan
  • Qing Wang
چکیده

This article mobilizes and integrates both existing and new time series data on real wages, physical heights and age-heaping to examine the long-term trend of living standards and human capital for China during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Our findings confirm the existence of a substantial gap in living standards between China and North-western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They also reveal a sustained decline in living standards and human capital at least in South China from the mid-nineteenth century followed by a recovery in the early twentieth century. However, comparative examination of age-heaping data shows that the level of Chinese human capital was relatively high by world standard during this period. We make a preliminary exploration of the historical implication of our findings. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

International Capital Movements and Relative Wages: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing Industries

In this paper, we use a multi-sector specific factors model with international capital mobility to examine the effects of globalization on the skill premium in U.S. manufacturing industries. This model allows us to identify two channels through which globalization affects relative wages: effects of international capital flows transmitted through changes in interest rates, and effects of international...

متن کامل

An Analysis of Economic Implications of the UK Leaving the EU

W hether the United Kingdom (UK) should remain in the European Union (EU) or not has been a fiercely debated issue both before and after the referendum in the UK on June 23, 2016. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pros and cons of the UK leaving the EU. It is concluded that if the UK leaves the EU, the resulting economic shock would risk adverse effects on macroecono...

متن کامل

Oil Shocks and Macroeconomic Adjustment: a DSGE modeling approach for the Case of Libya, 1970–2007

 Libya experienced a substantial increase in oil revenue as a result of increased oil prices during the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and again after 2000. Recent increases in oil production and the price of oil, and their positive and negative macroeconomic impacts upon key macroeconomic variables, are of considerable contemporary importance to an oil dependent economy such as that...

متن کامل

Did Late Imperial China Go Backwards or Forwards or Stand Still?

Using grain and farmland price data, this article estimates the interest rate and land rent in five provinces of Qing China to find that they tended to fall in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Given that population growth outstripped both acreage expansion and capital accumulation, the weakening in the rental income for capital and land leads one to predict that Chinese workers also suf...

متن کامل

How International Financial Crisis Affects Industries in Beijing, Capital City of China

 Beijing’s industrial structure is service-oriented with a high degree of economic openness, and GDP has maintained rapid growth. This paper analyzes the international financial crisis and the impact of China’s anti-crisis policies on Beijing’s economic development as well as its transmission mechanism. Impact Index (excluding seasonal factors) and ARMA Model are employed in the empirical...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2015