The origins of Italian human capital divides: new evidence from marriage signatures, ca. 1815

Abstract

This paper provides new evidence on the geography of literacy rates in pre-unitary Italy. I provide direct estimates based on a novel and balanced random sample of marriage certificates in 1815. The new figures are disaggregated by gender, area, and skill levels, and are compared to the relevant alternative estimates available. Literacy rates are generally low, and North versus South difference in 1815 literacy was as low as 13.7 percentage points, with the Southern literacy rate of about 50% that of Northern Italy. The North–South gap is much smaller for women than for men, and the average female literacy rate across Italy is a lower 9%. Literacy rates in Central Italy were almost identical to that of Southern Italy, arguably because the schooling systems of Central and Southern Italy were more elitist than the Northern Italian one. This evidence suggests that, although partially present also before 1815, the wide magnitude of North–South gaps in literacy which characterized the country on the eve of the political unification (1861) originated after the Napoleonic period. Primary school centralization reforms might have helped women to rapidly improve literacy rates, leading to a first, regionally unequal, ‘Silent Revolution’ (Cappelli and Vasta in Cliometrica 15:1–27, 2020a).