Poverty or Prosperity in Northern India? New Evidence on Real Wages, 1590s-1870s
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Pim de Zwart, Wageningen University; Jan Lucassen, International Review of Social History
Version: View help for Version V3
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application/zip | 2 MB | 03/25/2020 02:43:AM |
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application/zip | 2 MB | 08/09/2022 04:24:AM |
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application/zip | 2 MB | 09/28/2022 12:14:AM |
Project Citation:
de Zwart, Pim, and Lucassen, Jan. Poverty or Prosperity in Northern India? New Evidence on Real Wages, 1590s-1870s. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-09-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E118365V3
Project Description
Summary:
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These files contain all the data used in the publication "Poverty or Prosperity in Northern India? New Evidence on Real Wages, 1590s-1870s".
This paper introduces a new dataset on wages in northern India (from Gujarat in the West to Bengal in the East) from the 1590s to the 1870s. It follows Allen’s subsistence basket methodology to compute internationally comparable real wages to shed light on developments in Indian living standards over time, as well as to test some of the assumptions underlying the comparative real wage methodology. It adjusts the comparative cost of living indices to take into account differences in caloric intake due to variances in heights. Furthermore, the paper discusses the male/female wage gap in northern India. We demonstrate that the Great Divergence started somewhere in the late seventeenth century. This gap widens further after the 1720s and especially after the 1800s. It is subsequently primarily England’s spurt and India’s stagnation in the first half of the nineteenth century which brought about most serious differences in the standard of living in Eurasia. If the British colonial state is to blame – as often happens in the literature on India’s persistent poverty – it is in their failure to improve the already deteriorated situation after they had become the near-undisputed masters of India since 1820.
Note on v2
There are two main changes compared with Version 1:
1. In the sheet “PricesNEI” from the Excel file “prices_north_india.xlsx”, a faulty comma in the formula of column P, caused the average price of ghi to be calculated over 4 rather than 3 columns. This was corrected and the newly calculated series of ghi were also included in the “BasketNEI” sheet of that same file and the improved CPI was used in the calculations of the real wages. As a consequence of this change, the prices of the overall basket are increased somewhat, causing a slight downward adjustment of real wages.
2. In the sheet “PriceNOI”, for the years 1861-1930, the average price of millet (Column J) was accidentally calculated over columns F-I, rather than just column I. This has been corrected in this file and the newly computed CPI entered in the comparisons and real wages calculations. It has no observable consequences for the results.
We thank Joseph Enguehard (l’École normale supérieure de Lyon) for pointing us towards these issues.
Note on v3
There are two changes compared with v2:
1. In the file “7.global_comparisons”, sheet “cpi”, in the calculation of the 10-year averages for Beijing, London, Leipzig and Valencia, the range of years in the formula did not match with the decade in column A. This has been corrected.
2. In that same file, sheets “skilled” and “unskilled”, in the calculation of the 10-year averages, the formula for the 1680s accidently ranged from 1678-1689 instead of 1680-1689. This has been corrected.
We thank Tamer Güven (Utrecht University) for pointing us towards these issues.
This paper introduces a new dataset on wages in northern India (from Gujarat in the West to Bengal in the East) from the 1590s to the 1870s. It follows Allen’s subsistence basket methodology to compute internationally comparable real wages to shed light on developments in Indian living standards over time, as well as to test some of the assumptions underlying the comparative real wage methodology. It adjusts the comparative cost of living indices to take into account differences in caloric intake due to variances in heights. Furthermore, the paper discusses the male/female wage gap in northern India. We demonstrate that the Great Divergence started somewhere in the late seventeenth century. This gap widens further after the 1720s and especially after the 1800s. It is subsequently primarily England’s spurt and India’s stagnation in the first half of the nineteenth century which brought about most serious differences in the standard of living in Eurasia. If the British colonial state is to blame – as often happens in the literature on India’s persistent poverty – it is in their failure to improve the already deteriorated situation after they had become the near-undisputed masters of India since 1820.
Note on v2
There are two main changes compared with Version 1:
1. In the sheet “PricesNEI” from the Excel file “prices_north_india.xlsx”, a faulty comma in the formula of column P, caused the average price of ghi to be calculated over 4 rather than 3 columns. This was corrected and the newly calculated series of ghi were also included in the “BasketNEI” sheet of that same file and the improved CPI was used in the calculations of the real wages. As a consequence of this change, the prices of the overall basket are increased somewhat, causing a slight downward adjustment of real wages.
2. In the sheet “PriceNOI”, for the years 1861-1930, the average price of millet (Column J) was accidentally calculated over columns F-I, rather than just column I. This has been corrected in this file and the newly computed CPI entered in the comparisons and real wages calculations. It has no observable consequences for the results.
We thank Joseph Enguehard (l’École normale supérieure de Lyon) for pointing us towards these issues.
Note on v3
There are two changes compared with v2:
1. In the file “7.global_comparisons”, sheet “cpi”, in the calculation of the 10-year averages for Beijing, London, Leipzig and Valencia, the range of years in the formula did not match with the decade in column A. This has been corrected.
2. In that same file, sheets “skilled” and “unskilled”, in the calculation of the 10-year averages, the formula for the 1680s accidently ranged from 1678-1689 instead of 1680-1689. This has been corrected.
We thank Tamer Güven (Utrecht University) for pointing us towards these issues.
Funding Sources:
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Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal) (229548);
Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (275-53-016)
Scope of Project
Subject Terms:
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wages;
living standards;
prices;
real wages;
india;
colonialism
Geographic Coverage:
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India,
South Asia
Time Period(s):
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1590 – 1870
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Published Versions
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