The long-run evolution of global real wages

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on comparative real wages in history that has emerged over the past two decades. Research has shown that unskilled men's real wages were higher in England and the Low Countries than in other parts of Europe and Asia from about 1720. Yet 18th- and 19th-century real wages were even higher in the northern American colonies than they were in the European leaders, while those in Latin America were somewhere in the middle of the global wage ladder. This comparative picture is drawn on the basis of unskilled male day wages and various recent contributions focused on specific countries and time periods noting the variation in wage levels and trends for different groups of workers across urban and rural areas and labor contracts, varying days of labor per year, and the crucial and changing contributions of other family members. The latest research also highlights new ways to compute comparative cost-of-living indices. Building new datasets to take these issues into account in a new global comparative picture of long-run real wages is a major area for future research.