Oh Lord: The Great Divergence in Missionary Wages
Between Africa, America, Asia, and Europe, c. 1850 to 1960
Jutta Bolt (Groningen; e-mail: j.bolt@rug.nl)
Jacob Weisdorf (Odense, Utrecht, CEPR; e-mail: jacobw@sam.sdu.dk)
Abstract
This research contributes to the debate about the chronology of the Great Divergence in
living standards between Europe and the rest of the world. Our source material consists of
church books from missionary stations spread across Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. We
use the recorded salaries to build annual series of wages paid to missionary schoolteachers in
the different world regions between c. 1850 and 1960. We also experiment with different
price deflators to study regional variations in standards of living. These deflators include the
local costs of consumption baskets provided by Frankema and van Waijenburg (2012) and
others, as well as local prices derived from our own source material (e.g. school building
expenses). Our data enable us to distinguish between wages paid to Europeans working at
the local mission stations and to their native counterparts. As these wages were paid outside
the scope of local governments, they provide us with the opportunity to compare our wage
series to (previously published) wages recorded in colonial reports.
Reference:
Frankema, E., and M. van Waijenburg (2012), “Structural Impediments to African Growth?
New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880–1965,” Journal of Economic History 72,
pp. 895-926.