Mexico’s Real Wages in the Age of the Great Divergence, 1730-1930

Abstract

This study builds the first internationally comparable index of real wages for Mexico City bridging the 18 th and the early 20 th century. Real wages started out in relatively high international levels in the mid 18 th century, but declined from the late 1770s on, with some partial and temporal rebounds after the 1810s. After the 1860s, real wages recovered and eventually reached 18 th -century levels in the early 20 th century. Real wages of Mexico City's workers subsequently fell behind those of high-wage economies to converge with the lower fringes of middle-wage economies. The age of the global Great Divergence was Mexico's own age of stagnation and decline relative to the world economy.

Inequality and fiscal redistribution in Mexico: 1992-2015

“…There is a large and growing literature on the measurement, evolution, and determinants of income inequality and poverty in Mexico and Latin America over the last two decades (Székely 1998(Székely , 2005López-Calva and Lustig, 2010;Bustos and Leyva 2017;Del Castillo Negrete 2017;Reyes et al 2017), as well as in longer historical perspectives (Prados de la Escosura 2007;Williamson 2010;Arroyo 2011;Arroyo et al 2012;Allen et al 2015;Astorga 2015;Challú and Gómez-Galvarriato 2015;Bleynat et al 2017;Scott 2017a). The two companion papers in the Mexico component of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research project 'Inequality in the Giants' are devoted to income inequality (based on labour income and functional shares, respectively; see Ibarra and Ros 2017;Campos et al 2017).…”

THE NORTH–SOUTH DIVIDE: REAL WAGES AND WELFARE IN BRAZIL DURING THE EARLY 20THCENTURY

“…The issue of non-monetary income is a problem because it is often an unobserved variable. The exclusion of daily wage rates where the earnings include food or other forms of non-monetary payments is a common practice in historical studies of real wages (Allen et al 2011, p. 18;Challú and Gómez-Galvarriato 2015). For this study, however, potential biases are less of a concern because both questionnaires from 1912 and the 1920 census have data on the wages with and without food provisions (a seco).…”

Los Salarios Reales Y El Nivel De Vida en Una Economía Latinoamericana Colonial: Montevideo Entre 1760-1810

“…Una ratio de bienestar claramente por debajo de la unidad sugiere un panorama que contrasta, no sólo con la evidencia cuantitativa disponible sobre la ocurrencia de un notable proceso de expansión económica en ambas orillas del Río de la Plata durante esas décadas, sino con la información del acelerado crecimiento de la población de la jurisdicción de Montevideo entre Fuentes: Potosí (1810) y Bogotá (1800) según (Arroyo Abad 2013); México (1800) según (Challú y Gómez-Galvarriato 2015), Buenos Aires (1810) según . Montevideo (1800-1809) según datos del Cuadro 5; Santa Fe (1805) según la ratio de bienestar individual reportada en (Djenderedjian y Martirén 2015), escalada a un tamaño familiar de dos adultos y dos niños.…”

“…Esta afirmación ha sido confrontada por trabajos que han ofrecido evidencias donde el nivel de los salarios reales de los trabajadores de algunas ciudades latinoamericanas durante el siglo XVIII se muestra superior (Dobado y García Montero 2010) o similar (Challú y Gómez-Galvarriato 2015) al de sus pares de las zonas más desarrolladas de Europa.…”