Real wages in early economies: Evidence for living standards from 1800 BCE to 1300 CE
Walter Scheidel
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: September (2009)
Abstract
Price and wage data from Roman Egypt in the first three centuries CE indicate levels of real income for unskilled workers that are comparable to those implied by price and wage data in Diocletian’s price edict of 301 CE and to those documented in different parts of Europe and Asia in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. In all these cases, consumption was largely limited to goods that were essential for survival and living standards must have been very modest. A survey of daily wages expressed in terms of wheat in different Afroeurasian societies from 1800 BCE to 1300 CE yields similar results: with a few exceptions, real incomes of unskilled laborers tended to be very low.
Real incomes are a critical measure of human well-being. In recent years, historians have made considerable progress in the comparative study of real wages around the world. As a result, for the period from the thirteenth century CE onward, we are now in a position to compare real wages in a number of European countries as well as in Turkey, India, China, and Japan. Only small and frequently deficient samples of usable evidence have survived from earlier periods, mostly in the Near East. However, despite their various shortcomings, these sources are often sufficient to support rough estimates of real wages. In this paper, I present a critical survey of pertinent data from antiquity and the early and high Middle Ages. This broadened perspective expands the chronological scope of the historical study of real incomes of unskilled workers from a few centuries to up to four millennia and at least in a few cases enables us to trace contours of change in the very long run. It must be stressed at the outset that unlike for the more recent past, the comparative study of real wages in economies prior to the Black Death has barely begun. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first attempt ever to provide a comprehensive systematic survey for a large part of the early civilized world. For this reason, the principal objective of the present contribution is to showcase different ways of approaching this topic and to assess the currently available evidence in order to lay the groundwork for future more detailed case studies that will need to relate observed variation in real incomes to variation in overall economic performance and social development.
Walter Scheidel
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: September (2009)
Abstract
Price and wage data from Roman Egypt in the first three centuries CE indicate levels of real income for unskilled workers that are comparable to those implied by price and wage data in Diocletian’s price edict of 301 CE and to those documented in different parts of Europe and Asia in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. In all these cases, consumption was largely limited to goods that were essential for survival and living standards must have been very modest. A survey of daily wages expressed in terms of wheat in different Afroeurasian societies from 1800 BCE to 1300 CE yields similar results: with a few exceptions, real incomes of unskilled laborers tended to be very low.
Real incomes are a critical measure of human well-being. In recent years, historians have made considerable progress in the comparative study of real wages around the world. As a result, for the period from the thirteenth century CE onward, we are now in a position to compare real wages in a number of European countries as well as in Turkey, India, China, and Japan. Only small and frequently deficient samples of usable evidence have survived from earlier periods, mostly in the Near East. However, despite their various shortcomings, these sources are often sufficient to support rough estimates of real wages. In this paper, I present a critical survey of pertinent data from antiquity and the early and high Middle Ages. This broadened perspective expands the chronological scope of the historical study of real incomes of unskilled workers from a few centuries to up to four millennia and at least in a few cases enables us to trace contours of change in the very long run. It must be stressed at the outset that unlike for the more recent past, the comparative study of real wages in economies prior to the Black Death has barely begun. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first attempt ever to provide a comprehensive systematic survey for a large part of the early civilized world. For this reason, the principal objective of the present contribution is to showcase different ways of approaching this topic and to assess the currently available evidence in order to lay the groundwork for future more detailed case studies that will need to relate observed variation in real incomes to variation in overall economic performance and social development.
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