Suchergebnisse

This article develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, and Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and compares them with leading cities in Europe, Japan, and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the eighteenth century, the real income of building workers in Asia was similar to that of workers in the backward parts of Europe but far behind that in the leading economies in north‐western Europe. Real wages stagnated in China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and rose slowly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth, with little cumulative change for 200 years. The income disparities of the early twentieth century were due to long‐run stagnation in China combined with industrialization in Japan and Europe.

Historically, gender inequalities in health status, socio-economic standing and political rights have been large. This chapter documents gender differences in life expectancy and birth rates (to cover health status); in average years of schooling, labour force participation, inheritance rights and marriage age (to cover socioeconomic status); and in parliamentary seats and suffrage (to cover political rights). A composite indicator shows strong progress in reducing gender inequality in the past 60 years in most regions. Only in East Asia and in Eastern Europe this decline stalled in the 1980s. Differences in levels of gender inequality between regions remained large, however: Europe (including Eastern Europe) and the Western Offshoots performed best, although no country reached full gender equality. The Middle East and North Africa (mainly due to weak political rights) and South and Southeast Asia (due to skewed sex ratios at birth) performed worst.

Political institutions determine the degree of freedom people enjoy and their capacity to influence their social and political environment. This chapter provides historical evidence on the evolution of political institutions drawing upon two major research projects: the PolityIV dataset and the Vanhanen dataset, which focuses on electoral participation and competition. Strengths and weaknesses of both databases are discussed. The chapter shows that global averages are tending to rise according to both datasets, but with significant differences in timing. Both datasets also show that the Western Offshoots and Western Europe took the lead in this process, while other parts of the globe often experienced a much less gradual evolution, with occasional violent swings in political rights. Yet in the long run, there has been an impressive improvement in the quality of political institutions worldwide.