2016/35 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
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Rethinking Age-Heaping. A Cautionary Tale from Nineteenth Century Italy |
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Brian A'Hearn, Alexia Delfino and Alessandro Nuvolari |
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Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
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Age-Heaping, Numeracy, Human capital, Italy
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N33, J24
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
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A growing literature employs age-heaping as an indicator of human
capital, more specifically of numeracy. We re-examine this link in
light of a range of evidence from nineteenth century Italy, which
suggests that age-heapers were most likely ignorant of their age, not
their numbers. Though it can stand in as an acceptable proxy for
literacy, our findings indicate that age-heaping is most plausibly
interpreted as an indicator of cultural and institutional
modernisation rather than a measure of cognitive skills.
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