TY - JOUR TI - Inequality, Living standards, and Growth: Two Centuries of Economic Development in Mexico AU - Bleynat, Ingrid AU - ChallĂș, AmĂ­lcar E. AU - Segal, Paul T2 - Economic History Review AB - Abstract: Historical wage and income data provide both normative measures of living standards, and indicators of patterns of economic development. This study shows that, given limited historical data, median incomes are most appropriate for measuring welfare and inequality, while urban unskilled wages can be used to test dualist models of development. We present new estimates of these series for Mexico from 1800 to 2015 and find that both have historically failed to keep up with aggregate growth: GDP per worker is now over eight times higher than in the nineteenth century, while unskilled urban real wages are only 2.2 times higher, and national median incomes only 2.0 times higher. From the perspective of inequality and social welfare, our findings confirm that there is no automatic positive relationship between economic growth and rising living standards for the majority. From the perspective of development, we argue that these findings are explained by a dual economy model incorporating Lewis's assumption of a reserve army of labour, and we explain why the decline in inequality predicted by Kuznets has not occurred. DA - 2021/// PY - 2021 DO - 10.1111/ehr.13027 DP - DOI.org (Crossref) VL - 74 IS - 3 SP - 584 EP - 610 J2 - The Economic History Review LA - en SN - 0013-0117, 1468-0289 ST - Inequality, living standards, and growth UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.13027 Y2 - 2021/09/20/16:07:08 KW - Business history in Latin America ER -