This study looks at human capital in Spain during the early stages of modern economic growth. In order to do so, we have assembled a new dataset on ageheaping and literacy in Spain for both men and women between 1877 and 1930 based on six population censuses with information for 49 provinces....

Relying on an extremely rich data set of individuals living in Madrid in 1880 and 1905, this article explores the relationship between class, access to education and social mobility. In order to do so, we first focus on children and assess the probability of being literate according to their...

This paper reconstructs infant and child sex ratios, the number of boys per hundred girls, in Europe circa 1880. Contrary to previous interpretations arguing that there is little evidence of gender discrimination resulting in excess female mortality in infancy and childhood, the results suggest...

Based on anecdotal evidence on girls' inferior status and the analysis of sex ratios, this article argues that son preference resulted in gender discriminatory practices that unduly increased female mortality rates in infancy and childhood in Greece during the late-19th and early-20th century....

This study provides new evidence on the advance of literacy in Spain during the period 1860-1930. A novel dataset, built with historical information (over 8,000 municipalities) from the Spanish population censuses, enables us to describe this process in detail from the end of the Ancien Régime...

Relying on longitudinal micro data from a Spanish rural region between 1750 and 1950, this article evidences that families mortally neglected a significant fraction of their female babies. On the one hand, baptism records exhibit exceptionally high sex ratios at birth, especially during the 19th...

In this article we explore the relationship between institutions and educational performance from a historical perspective. Relying on municipal-level information for the Spanish region of Valencia, our study explores the economic effects of the delegation of power during the ancien regime from...