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Evidence of an early modern “Little divergence” in real wages between northwestern Europe and the rest of the continent is mostly based on the comparative study of a sample of leading European cities. Focusing on France and England this study reassesses the debate from a country-level perspective. The findings challenge the notion of an early modern divergence pointing to the coexistence of both divergence and convergence phases until the eighteenth century. Results also suggest that the real wages of a significant share of the French male labor force were broadly on par with the levels prevailing in England before c.1750.

We construct a new series of GDP per capita for France for the period 1280–1850 using the demand-side approach. Our estimates point to a long-run stability of the French economy with a very gradual acceleration toward modern economic growth. In comparative perspective, our new estimates suggest that England and France were characterized by similar levels of economic performance until the second half of the seventeenth century. It is only after that period that the English economy “forges ahead” in a consistent way.

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Human capital can be defined as the set of knowledge and skills that individuals accumulate over time. These range from basic competences to more sophisticated forms of knowledge (intermediate and upper-tail human capital). All of them entail complex measurement problems in historical perspective as sources are often too scarce, problematic, and unreliable to allow proper measurement. Human capital is usually measured relying on the extensive margin of education or the quantity of education, that is, how many people are able to read or count or how many people have a certain degree of schooling. Less is known about the effective acquisition of skills, for example, the quality of education. Human capital can affect labor productivity and innovative capacity and it is generally regarded as one of the most important determinants of economic growth, figuring prominently in debates on the origin of the Industrial Revolution and the transition from preindustrial to modern economic growth. The determinants of education are several and vary widely over time and across space, including economic, institutional, cultural, and social factors. Historically, the acquisition of skills has deeply changed in nature, passing from the largely decentralized and fragmented systems of the preindustrial period to the 19th-century systems of mass education, where education was more and more universal and free, and the accumulation of skills was largely coordinated by states and other public authorities. In several regards, literature on human capital is still limited. Few efforts, for instance, have been made to harmonize data, integrate them in a comparative and regional perspective, explore the potential of individual-level information, and assess if and to what extent different dimensions of human capital such as technical and higher education have affected long-term patterns in economic growth and development. Other aspects have long been neglected or remain virtually unexplored, such as gender differences in education, the efficiency of education systems and its determinants, and the analysis of human capital in developing countries.