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Title: How did Women Count? A Note on Gender-Specific Age Heaping Differences in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2012
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Abstract: The role of human capital in economic growth is now largely uncontested. One indicator of human capital frequently used for the pre-1900 period is age heaping, which has been increasingly used to measure gender-specific differences. In this note, we find that in some historical samples, married women heap significantly less than unmarried women. This is still true after correcting for possible selection effects. A possible explanation is that a percentage of women adapted their ages to that of their husbands, hence biasing the Whipple index. We find the same effect to a lesser extent for men. Since this bias differs over time and across countries, a consistent comparison of female age heaping should be made by focusing on unmarried women.
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Authors: Van Leeuwen-Li, Jieli; Foldvari, Peter; Van Leeuwen, Bas
Periodical (Full): The Economic History Review
Issue: 1
Volume: 65
Pages: 304-313
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Aging and Retirement, Gender
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