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Abstract:  How societies and individuals accumulate the skills needed to keep pace with technological change is a central question in economic history. While the literature on comparative skill-premiums has provided valuable insights on changing supply and demand conditions in Europe and the Americas, little is known yet about these processes in the Global South. This paper presents the first database on long-term skill-premiums for 50 countries in Asia and Africa, spanning colonial and post-colonial eras. Our new data-series reveal three major developments that have so far gone unnoticed. We show that up to c. 1940, skilled artisanal and white-collar labor was far more expensive than it had been in pre-industrial Europe; that the relative price of skills was, on average, distinctively higher in Africa than in Asia; and that both regions witnessed a ‘free-fall’ in skill-premiums during the 20th century, converging to levels long witnessed in the early industrializers. This paper probes into the reasons for the free-fall and the differences between Africa and Asia.

The Economic and Social History series for Hilary Term 2021 is convened by Stephen Broadberry and Mattia Bertazzini.

For more information on this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact stephen.broadberry@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.