Joerg Baten

Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital

Age data frequently display excess frequencies at round or attractive ages, such as even numbers and multiples of five. This phenomenon of age heaping has been viewed as a problem in previous research, especially in demography and epidemiology. We see it as an opportunity and propose its use as a measure of human capital that can yield comparable estimates across a wide range of historical contexts. A simulation study yields methodological guidelines for measuring and interpreting differences in age heaping, while analysis of contemporary and historical datasets demonstrates the existence of a robust correlation between age heaping and literacy at both the individual and aggregate level. To illustrate the method, we generate estimates of human capital in Europe over the very long run, which support the hypothesis of a major increase in human capital preceding the industrial revolution.

The biological standard of living in Europe during the last two millennia

This paper offers the first anthropometric estimates on the biological standard of living in central Europe in the first millennium, and expands the literature on the second millenium. The overall picture is one of stagnant heights. There was not much progress in European nutritional status, not even between 1000 and 1800, when recent GDP per capita estimates arrive at growing figures. We find that heights stagnated during the Roman imperial period in Central, Western and Southern Europe. One astonishing result is the height increase in the fifth and sixth centuries. Noteworthy is the synchronicity of the height development in three large regions of Europe. In a regression analysis of height determinants, population density was clearly economically (but not statistically) significant. Decreasing marginal product theories and Malthusian thought cannot be denied for the pre-1800 period. Of marginal significance were climate (warmer temperatures were good for nutritional status), social inequality and gender inequality (both reduce average height).

Book production and the onset of modern economic growth

We provide a new data set on per capita book production as a proxy for advanced literacy skills, and assess this relative to other measures. While literacy proxies very basic skills, book production per capita is an indicator for more advanced capabilities. Growth theory suggests that human capital formation plays a significant role in creating the ‘wealth of nations.’ This study tests whether human capital formation has an impact on early-modern growth disparities. In contrast to some previous studies which denied the role of human capital as a crucial determinant of long-term growth, we confirm its importance.

Growing Tall but Unequal: New Findings and New Background Evidence on Anthropometric Welfare in 156 Countries, 1810–1989

Abstract This is the first initiative to collate the entire body of anthropometric evidence during the 19th and 20th centuries, on a global scale. By providing a comprehensive dataset on global height developments we are able to emphasize an alternative view of the history of human well-being and a basis for understanding characteristics of well-being in 156 countries, 1810–1989.

Creating Firms for a New Century: Determinants of Firm Creation Around 1900

A rapidly growing literature in industrial economics and regional economics uses data sets of individual firms or regional firm creation rates to answer the central question: What makes entrepreneurs? Which factors encourage some people to set up their own business and create jobs, and what prevents potential entrepreneurs from doing so? This contribution explores the determinants of regional differences in firm creation rates by using a new data set of 4036 individual firms from Southwest Germany around 1900. Agglomeration effects and earlier firm creations stimulate current firm creation. In addition, a small and medium firm environment allows the formation of specific human capital – another favourable factor for a dynamic firm creation process in some regions.

Autarchy, market disintegration, and health: the mortality and nutritional crisis in Nazi Germany, 1933-1937.

Trends in mortality, nutritional status and food supply are compared to other living standard indicators for the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and for the early years of the Nazi regime (1933-1937). The results imply that Germany experienced a substantial increase in mortality rates in most age groups in the mid-1930s, even relative to those of 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression. Moreover, childrens heights--an indicator of the quality of nutrition and health--were generally stagnating between 1933 and 1938, but had increased significantly during the 1920s. Persecution, by itself, does not explain such an adverse development in biological welfare; the non-persecuted segments of the German population were affected as well. The reason for this adverse development was caused by the fact that military expenditures increased at the expense of public health measures. In addition, food imports were curtailed, and prices of many agricultural products were controlled. There is ample evidence that this set of economic policies had an adverse effect on the health and nutritional status of the population. The highly developed areas of Germany with large urban sectors and the coastal regions of the Northwest were affected most from the policy of restricting imports of protein-rich agricultural products.

New evidence and new methods to measure human capital inequality before and during the industrial revolution: France and the US in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries

We explore pre- and early industrial inequality of numeracy using the age heaping method and anthropometric strategies. For France, we map differential numeracy between the upper and lower segments of a sample population for 26 regions during the seventeenth century. For the US, inequality of numeracy is estimated for 25 states during the 19th century. Testing the hypothesis of a negative impact of inequality on welfare growth, we find evidence that lower inequality increased industrial development in the US, whereas for France such an effect was only evident in interactions with political variables such as proximity to central government.

The anthropometric history of Argentina, Brazil and Peru during the 19th and early 20th century

This anthropometric study focuses on the histories of three important Latin American countries - Brazil, Peru, and Argentina - during the 19th century, and tests hypotheses concerning their welfare trends. While non-farm Brazil and Lima, Peru, started at relatively low height levels, Brazil made substantial progress in nutritional levels from the 1860s to the 1880s. In contrast, Lima remained at low levels. Argentinean men were tall to begin with, but heights stagnated until 1910. The only exception were farmers and landowners, who benefited from the export boom.

Protein supply and nutritional status in nineteenth century Bavaria, Prussia and France

What determined regional height differences in the 19th century? We compare anthropometric evidence with production estimates of different food products and other economic variables. To this end, we concentrate on 179 rural regions and 29 towns in Bavaria (Southeast Germany). This regionally disaggregated level of analysis enables us to study the influence of the local supply of different food products on the nutritional status of the population, among which milk turned out particularly important. This result is tested and confirmed with regional data from Prussia and France.

Regional inequality in human capital formation in Europe, 1790–1880

Abstract Recent theoretical advances reveal the importance of human capital for long-run economic growth. However, the absence of data makes it difficult to measure human capital before 1870 at the national level, let alone at the regional level within countries. By using the age heaping method and a large, new data set, we approximate the numeracy values in more than 570 regions in Europe between 1790 and 1880. The results indicate a significant gap in numeracy levels between advanced west and central European countries and the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, differences in basic numeracy between and within countries became smaller over the nineteenth century, as the periphery solved its basic numeracy problem.