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How skilled were English agricultural labourers in the early nineteenth century? 1
Author(s) -
BURNETTE JOYCE
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2006.00363.x
Subject(s) - wage , wage growth , census , factory (object oriented programming) , agriculture , labour economics , economics , demographic economics , demography , geography , sociology , population , archaeology , computer science , programming language
Using the wage accounts of two different farms in the 1830s and 1840s, matched with census records to determine the age of the workers, this article estimates age‐wage profiles for male and female agricultural labourers. Females earned less than males, and had less wage growth over their life cycles. Male wage profiles peaked at age 30–5, earlier than the wage profiles of workers today. Before the age of 30 wage growth was more rapid than increases in strength, but less rapid than wage growth among factory workers. If wage increases after the age of 20 indicate skill acquisition, then male agricultural labourers acquired a significant amount of skill, but less skill than contemporaneous factory workers.