The Condition of the Working-Class in England, 1200-

The paper estimates of both the real wages of male building craftsmen and laborers in England for 1200-2000, and the wage premium associated with skills. These estimates have implications for both the causes and the consequences of the Industrial Revolution. They reveal, for example, that as a result of the Industrial Revolution by the 1830s, English workers were better off than in any time in recorded history. But they also imply that modern economic growth, fuelled by productivity advance began long before 1760, and indeed before the institutional reforms of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Finally these estimates suggest that human capital interpretations of the Industrial Revolution, formalized by Becker et al. (1990), Galor and Weil (2000) and Lucas (2002), as presently constructed conflict with the empirical record. Human capital accumulation in England began in an era when the market rewards to skill acquisition were at historically low levels