Japanese Wages and Living Standards in 1720-1913: an International Comparison

This paper calculates welfare ratios for unskilled daily labors for Japan in 1720-1913 and compares with the European series for the same period. Our finding, based on the reconstruction of actual consumption baskets, the price data for two benchmark periods, 1750 and 1884, and linked by real wage index, shows that real purchasing power for Japanese unskilled laborers in Kyoto and later Tokyo in this period were about a third of the level in London, but comparable to Southern European cities. * We want to thank Osamu Saito, Jan Luiten van Zanden for encouragement and advice. We remain solely responsible for the errors.

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