Organizing team:
Joerg Baten (Universitát Tübingen, Germany)
The project focuses on the comparison of three important dimensions of living standards:
There are a number of possible relationships between those three living standard components. For example, it is clear that both nutrition and education can improve health and longevity, and Robert Barro found that both education and health play a crucial role for subsequent welfare growth. The main question in the context of our European project will be on regional inequalities between European regions (including Turkey): when did regional differences emerge (we have to go back in time here)? In which situation and under which economic policy did regional inequality decline again? We will collect the existing estimates and improve them in crucial cases, building on a rich tradition of research in all three of those fields among the participating researchers.
What are the implications of this research? The divergence between European regions, and even between regions of individual countries and Empires is clearly a crucial topic for such a European network. Understanding the regional and social inequalities and their implications for today’s policies and attitudes can help a lot for the development of a common European identity.
Additional data collection will be necessary especially for East European regions and Turkey (and the regions of the Ottoman Empire before the creation of the Turkish national state). In some cases basic education can be proxied with literacy (for example, the regional statistics of the Habsburg Monarchy are quite detailed), in other cases we will use age heaping techniques which rely on the accuracy of age statements. This also allows to approximate numeracy, as previous research found a strong correlation between age heaping behaviour and PISA math tests. The primary sources will be censuses in which age statements are included. Height data for many nations in Eastern Europe are already available.