Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T15:13:36.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

City-Farm Wage Gaps in Late Nineteenth-Century France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Pierre Sicsic
Pierre Sicsic
Affiliation:
Centre de Recherche of the Banque de France, 39 rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, 75001 Paris, France.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Wage gaps between farm and city are used to assess whether industrialization in late nineteenth-century France was choked off by peasants' alleged reluctance to move. If industry suffered due to labor scarcity, wage gaps should have been large and rising. It turns out that the wage gap, when adjusted for costs of living and computed as an average of 20 regional wage gaps, was nil in 1852 and about 25 percent in 1892. Thus wage gaps were rising but were far smaller throughout the late nineteenth century than they were in England during similar stages of industrialization.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 675 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Board of Trade, Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, Together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of France, Parliamentary Papers Cd. 4521, Vol. 91, No. 1 (London, 1909).Google Scholar
Bompard, Jean-Pierre, Magnac, Thierry, and Postel-Vinay, Gilles, “Emploi, mobilité et chômage en France au XIXe siècle: Migrations saisonnières entre industrie et agriculture,” Annales ESC, 45 (01 1990), pp. 55–76.Google Scholar
Boyer, George R., and Hatton, Timothy J., “Regional Labor Market Integration in Britain, 1850–1913” (Paper presented at the McGill Conference on the Evolution of Labor Markets, Montreal, 02 1991).Google Scholar
Chevalier, Louis, La formation de la population parisienne au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1950).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crafts, N. F. R., “Economie Growth in France and Britain, 1830–1910: A Review of the Evidence,” this Journal, 44 (03 1984), pp. 49–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dallas, Gregor, The Imperfect Peasant Economy: The Loire Country, 1800–1914 (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar
Désert, Gabriel, “Prospérité de l'agriculture,” “La grande dépression de l'agriculture,” and “Bilan économique à la veille de la Iere guerre mondiale,” in Duby, George and Wallon, Armand, eds., Histoire de la France Rurale, vol. 3: Apogée et crise de la civilisation paysanne, 1789–1914 (Paris, 1977), pp. 221–53, 387–407, 453–67.Google Scholar
Dupeux, Georges, Aspects de l'histoire sociale et politique du Loir-et-Cher, 1848–1914 (Paris, 1962).Google Scholar
Dupeux, Georges, Atlas historique de l'urbanisation de la France (1811–1975) (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley, and Goldin, Claudia, “Seasonality in Nineteenth Century Labor Markets” (NBER Working Paper No. 20 on Historical Factors in Long Run Growth, 01 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farcy, Jean-Claude, “Les paysans beaucerons de la fin de l' Ancien Régime aulendemain de la première guerre mondiale” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris-X Nanterre, 1985).Google Scholar
Fohlen, Claude, L'industrie textile au temps du Second Empire (Paris, 1956).Google Scholar
Garden, Maurice, “L'évolution de la population active,” in Dupâquier, Jacques, ed., Histoire de la population française (Paris, 1988), vol. 3, pp. 243–68.Google Scholar
Gille, Bertrand, Les sources statistiques de l'histoire de France: Des enquêtes du XVIIIe siècle á 1870 (Geneva, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grantham, George W., “Scale and Organization in French Farming, 1840–1880,” in Parker, William N. and Jones, Eric L., eds., European Peasants and Their Markets (Princeton, 1975), pp. 293–326.Google Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J., and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Integrated and Segmented Labor Markets: Thinking in Two Sectors,” this Journal, 51 (06 1991), pp. 413–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J., and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Wage Gaps between Farm and City: Michigan in the 1890s,” Explorations in Economic History, 28 (10 1991), pp. 381–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heywood, Colin, “The Role of the Peasantry in French Industrialization, 1815–80,” The Economic History Review, 34 (08 1981), pp. 359–76.Google Scholar
Hohenberg, Paul, “Change in Rural France in the Period of Industrialization, 1830–1914,” this Journal, 32 (03 1972), pp. 219–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubscher, Ronald H., “L'Agriculture et la Société rurale dans le Pas-de-Calais du milieu du XIXe siècle à 1914 (Arras, 1979, 1980).Google Scholar
INSEE, Annuaire statistique de la France 1966, résumé rétrospectif (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar
Kindleberger, Charles P., Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1851–1950 (Cambridge, MA, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuczynski, Jürgen, A Short History of Labour Conditions Under Industrial Capitalism, vol. 4: France, 1700 to the Present Day (London, 1946).Google Scholar
Laurent, Robert, “Tradition et progrès: Le secteur agricole,” in Braudel, Fernand and Labrousse, Ernest, eds., Histoire économique et sociale de la France, tome 3, L'avènement de l'ère industrielle (1789–années 1880) (Paris, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 619–735.Google Scholar
Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice, “La décélération de l'économie française dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle,” Revue d'Histoire Économique et Sociale, 44 (09 1974), pp. 485–507.Google Scholar
Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice, “Capital Investment and Economic Growth in France, 1820–1930,” in Mathias, Peter and Postan, M. M., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 7: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour, and Enterprise (Cambridge, 1978), part 1, pp. 231–95.Google Scholar
Lindert, Peter H., “Who Owned Victorian England?: The Debate Over Landed Wealth and Inequality,” Agricultural History, 61 (Fall 1987), pp. 25–51.Google Scholar
Ministère de l'Agriculture, Statistique agricole de la France (Algérie et colonies), Résultats généraux de l'enquête décennale de 1882 (Nancy, 1887).Google Scholar
Ministère de l'Agriculture, Statistique agricole de la France, Résultats généraux de l'enquête décennale de 1892 (Paris, 1897).Google Scholar
Nardinelli, Clark, “Productivity in Nineteenth Century France and Britain: A Note on the Comparisons,” Journal of European Economic History, 17 (Fall 1988), pp. 427–34.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Patrick, and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France 1780–1914 (London, 1978).Google Scholar
Office des renseignements agricoles (Ministère de l'Agriculture), Enquête sur les salaires agricoles (Paris, 1912).Google Scholar
Office du travail (Ministère du Commerce, de l'Industrie des Postes et des Télégraphes), Salaires et durée du travail dans l'industrie française, 4 vols. (Paris, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897).Google Scholar
Phelps-Brown, Henry, A Century of Pay (London, 1968).Google Scholar
Rougerie, Jacques, “Remarques sur l'histoire des salaires à Paris au XIXe siècle,” Le Mouvement Social (04 1968), pp. 71–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sicsic, Pierre, “Labor Markets and Establishment Size in Nineteenth Century France” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1991).Google Scholar
Simiand, François, Le salaire, l'évolution sociale et la monnaie (Paris, 1932).Google Scholar
Statistique de la France, 2e série, vols. 7–8: Statistique Agricole décennale de 1852 (Paris, 1858, 1860).Google Scholar
Statistique de la France, 2e série, vol. 13: Prix et salaires á diverses époques (Strasbourg, 1863).Google Scholar
Statistique de la France, 2e série, vol. 16: Résultats généraux de l'enquête décennale de 1862 (Strasbourg, 1870).Google Scholar
Statistique de la France, nouvelle série, vol. 12: Statistique Annuelle, année 1882 (Paris, 1885).Google Scholar
Statistique de la France, Statistique annuelle du mouvement de la population pour les années 1899 et 1900 (Paris, 1901).Google Scholar
Statistique générale de la France (Ministère du Travail et de la Prévoyance Sociale), Salaires et coût de l'existence á diverses époques jusqu'en 1910 (Paris, 1911).Google Scholar
Toutain, Jean-Claude, La population de la France de 1700 á 1959 (Paris, 1963).Google Scholar
Tugault, Yves, Fécondité et urbanisation (Paris, 1963).Google Scholar
Weir, David R., “Labor Market Performance and Demographic Change in Nineteenth Century France” (Paper presented at the McGill Conference on the Evolution of Labor Markets, Montreal, 02 1991).Google Scholar
Williamson, Jeffrey G., “The Structure of Pay in Britain, 1710–1911,” in Uselding, Paul, ed., Research in Economic History (Greenwich, CO, 1982), vol. 7, pp. 1–54.Google Scholar
Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Did British Labor Markets Fail during the Industrial Revolution?” Oxford Economic Papers, 39 (12 1987), pp. 641–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar