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ABSTRACT
This article constructs long-span time series indices on wages in Denmark and explores the growth in living standards in the pre-industrial era. There were several persistent upward and downward trends in real annual earnings from 1500 to 1820, but no clear upward long-term trend. This finding seems hard to reconcile with Maddison's figure for the average annual growth in real GDP per capita in Denmark (0.17%) over the same period. This is the case, even if the growth rate in pre-industrial annual earnings is underestimated by 0.05%–0.06% per annum due to an increased number of working days.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank editors and reviewers for useful comments on preliminary versions of this article. Views and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Danmarks Nationalbank. The author alone is responsible for any remaining errors and shortcomings.