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Underinvestment in Literacy? The Potential Contribution of Government Involvement in Elementary Education to Economic Growth in Nineteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

David Mitch
David Mitch
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Catonsville, Maryland 21228.
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Abstract

The case for government involvement in the provision of elementary education in nineteenth-century England is assessed by presenting estimates of the rate of return to literacy. Before government involvement, the estimated rate of return to male literacy was considerably above the return on most alternative investments in the English economy. The differential narrowed with the onset of government involvement. The evidence is much weaker for any initial underinvestment in female literacy. The contribution to national income from correcting any initial underinvestment in literacy appears to have been modest.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 557 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 For a survey of the history of economic thought on government involvement in education, see Blaug, Mark, “The Economics of Education in English Classical Political Economy: A ReExamination,” in Essays in Adam Smith, ed. Skinner, Andrew and Wilson, Thomas (Oxford, 1975).Google Scholar For a sample of the debate in recent times, see West, E. G., “Resource Allocation and Growth in Early Nineteenth-Century British Education,” Economic History Review, 23 (04 1970), 69–95;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hurt, J. S., “Professor West on Early Nineteenth-Century Education,” Economic History Review, 24 (11 1971), 624–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See West, “Resource Allocation and Growth,” p. 95;Google Scholar and idem, “Nineteenth-Century Educational History: The Kiesling Critique,” Economic History Review, 36 (Aug. 1983), 431–32.

3 For a survey of this approach, see Psacharopoulos, George, Returns to Education (San Francisco, 1973), pp. 79–86.Google Scholar

4 Some rough estimates of the potential magnitude of the total social gains to education have been made in Becker, Gary, Human Capital, 2d ed. (New York, 1975), pp. 194–98.Google Scholar

5 For annual costs per pupil in monitorial schools, see Parliamentary Papers, 1837–38, vol. 7, Cmnd. 589, “Minutes of Evidence-Report from the select committee on Education of the Poorer Classes in England and Wales,” p. 71, par. 669.Google Scholar For fees in dame schools, see Mitch, , “The Spread of Literacy in Nineteenth-Century England” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 1982), p. 198.Google Scholar

6 For fees in private common day schools see Mitch, “The Spread of Literacy.”Google Scholar

7 The estimate of average teacher salaries is from Tropp, Asher, The School Teachers: The Growth of the Teaching Profession in England and Wales to the Present Day (New York, 1956). p. 39. The estimated ratio of total schooling costs to teacher salaries was based on Parliamentary Papers, 1861, vol. 21, Pt. 1, Cmnd. 2794–I, p. 63, and 1860, vol. 54, p. XVII.Google Scholar

8 For evidence on children's wages, see Mitch, “The Spread of Literacy,” pp. 279–81.Google Scholar

9 A number of contemporary sources suggest that three years were required to obtain literacy, and a survey contained in the Newcastle Commission Report indicates that school attendance in the mid-nineteenth century averaged 25 weeks per year. For a discussion of the curriculum of the nineteenth-century elementary school by year of attendance, see Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education in England and Wales from 1800 to the Present Day (London, 1914), pp. 275–84. For school enrollment patterns by standard or year of attendance, see Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. 53, Cmnd. 106, “Return for Each of the Last 20 Years, with Respect to Schools Under Inspection in England and Wales,” pp. 639–42;Google Scholar and Madoc-Jones, Beryl, “Patterns of School Attendance and their Social Significance: Mitcham National School 1830–39” in Popular Education and Socialization in the Nineteenth-Century, ed. McCann, Phillip (London, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Male wage rates by occupation taken from Baxter, R. Dudley, National Income: The United Kingdom (London, 1868).Google Scholar Female wage rates by occupation taken from Levi, Leone, Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes (London, 1867).Google Scholar An estimate of life expectancy in England in the 1840s at age 10 was taken from Thompson, Warren, Population Problems (New York, 1935), p. 221.Google Scholar

11 Female labor force participation rates were taken from Parliamentary Papers, 1852–53, vol. 8, Pt. I, Cmnd. 1691–I, pp. 225–27.Google Scholar

12 Evidence on the interaction between family background and ability was taken from Floud, J. E., Halsey, A. H., and Martin, F. M., Social Class and Educational Opportunity (London, 1956), p. 59.Google Scholar

13 Age-specific mortality estimates were taken from Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 38–41.Google Scholar The emigration estimates were based on Thomas, Brinley, Migration and Economic Growth. A Study of Great Britain and the Atlantic Economy, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 58, 124. Unemployment estimates were taken from Mitchell and Deane, Abstract, p. 64.Google Scholar

14 Feinstein, C., “Home and Foreign Capital Investment: Some Aspects of Capital Formation and Finance in the U.K., 1870–1913” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1960).Google Scholar

15 See Edelstein, Michael, Overseas Investment in the Age of High Imperialism, The United Kingdom, 1850–1914 (New York, 1982), chaps. 5 and 6.Google Scholar

16 See Cottrell, P. L., Industrial Finance, 1830–1914: The Finance and Organization of English Manufacturing Industry (London, 1980), pp. 257–62.Google Scholar

17 Hawke, G. R., Railways and Economic Growth in England, 1840–1870 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 405–7.Google Scholar

18 See Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, Vol. I, The Early Railway Age (Cambridge, 1930), p. 81.Google Scholar

19 The returns to female literacy rise after controlling for social class. The reasons for this result require further investigation.Google Scholar

20 General money wage trends were taken from Bowley, A. L., Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1900), p. 132.Google Scholar

21 Edelstein, Overseas Investment, p. 148.Google Scholar

22 Illiteracy rate of grooms in 1840 taken from Annual Report of the Registrar General of England and Wales for 1840. Population over 14 in 1840 taken from Mitchell and Deane, Abstract, p. 12.Google Scholar

23 Calculated from the highest adjusted rates of return to literacy for males and females reported in Table 2. English National Income in 1841 is estimated by prorating the estimate of 1841 British National Income in Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth. 1688–1955 (Cambridge, 1962) by England's share in British population weighted by an estimate of English relative to Scotch agricultural wage rates.Google Scholar

24 For the social savings on railway investment, see Hawke, Railways and Economic Growth, p. 409.Google Scholar The output gain appears small relative to the residual in nineteenth-century British economic growth reported in Matthews, R. C. O., Feinstein, C. H., and Odling-Smee, J. C., British Economic Growth, 1856–1973 (Stanford, 1982), p. 506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See Johnson, Richard, “Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian Britain,” Past and Present, 49 (11 1970), 96–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a quantitative analysis of this issue, see Field, Alexander, “Occupational Structure, Dissent, and Educational Commitment: Lancashire, 1844,” Research in Economic History, 4 (1979), 235–87.Google Scholar