Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital

Abstract

Age data frequently display excess frequencies at round or attractive ages, such as even numbers and multiples of five. This phenomenon of age heaping has been viewed as a problem in previous research, especially in demography and epidemiology. We see it as an opportunity and propose its use as a measure of human capital that can yield comparable estimates across a wide range of historical contexts. A simulation study yields methodological guidelines for measuring and interpreting differences in age heaping, while analysis of contemporary and historical datasets demonstrates the existence of a robust correlation between age heaping and literacy at both the individual and aggregate level. To illustrate the method, we generate estimates of human capital in Europe over the very long run, which support the hypothesis of a major increase in human capital preceding the industrial revolution.

The long-run impact of human capital on innovation and economic development in the regions of Europe

“…Numeracy is measured by the age heaping method which has been used in an increasing number of recent publications (A'Hearn, Crayen, and Baten 2009;Manzel and Baten 2009;Crayen and Baten 2010;Hippe 2012b;Hippe and Baten 2012;Baten and Hippe 2017;Diebolt, Hippe, and Jaoul-Grammare 2017).…”

“…This index has originally been the Whipple index (WI) but has recently been improved by the ABCC Index (see A'Hearn, Crayen, and Baten 2009). This index has the same value range as literacy (0 to 100 percentage points or simply points) which makes comparisons much easier.…”

Gender Equality and Inequality in Numeracy: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean, 1880–1949

“…Age heaping has been used a number of times recently to measure education levels (Mokyr, 1983;2008b;A'Hearn, Baten and Crayen, 2009;de Moor and van Zanden, 2008;Clark, 2007;Manzel, 2007;Baten, Crayen and Manzel, 2008, see also the applications in Cinnirella, 2008;Mironov, 2006;. It describes the phenomenon that people tend to round up or down their age, mostly in multiples of five, when asked how old they are.…”

Natural Resources Curse in the Long Run? Bolivia, Chile and Peru in the Nordic Countries’ Mirror

“…Concerning the first, basic numeracy skills are needed for an income tax system where people are asked to file their own returns and self-assess their incomes and tax payments. Several works point towards Scandinavia having high levels of numeracy already at the beginning of our period, which would have made the administration of an income tax system feasible [130,131] (remember as well the references about high literacy in the previous subsection). Business size is another determinant of tax collection and has been acknowledged as such in modern times [132,133].…”