The expansion of basic education during ‘deskilling’ technological change in England and Wales, c . 1780–1830
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8851971 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Louis Henderson (0009-0004-3560-4186, Jesus College, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 78 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 553-582 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.13354 |
| OpenAlex | W4399294828 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 98 |
The first country to industrialize – England – ostensibly did so without expanding investment in the basic education of its workforce. The empirical evidence underpinning this argument for England rests largely on signature rates at marriage. These are not a perfect indication of educational achievement, particularly as many children never learned to write. More problematically, I argue signatures are likely to have systematically underestimated human capital in industrial districts. In place of signature data, I propose age heaping, a measure widely understood as a proxy for numeracy but shown here to be closely related to both reading and writing abilities. In contrast to signatures, this measure suggests that ‘deskilling’ industrialization induced human capital accumulation. I argue that this occurred not because human capital was directly productive, but rather because schools provided a valuable signal. Sunday school attendance signalled low leisure‐preference among child workers and were popularly attended in industrial districts. Further, such schools taught children to read but not write, which they considered inappropriate for the Sabbath, accounting for the discrepancy between these two measures of human capital
Demographic economics · Deskilling · Economic growth · Economics · Human capital · Industrialisation · Labour economics · Polarization (electrochemistry · Political science · Sociology · Workforce · Australian History and Society · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law
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| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |