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Human capital of the US deaf population from 1850 to 1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2025

Zachary Bartsch Open the ORCID record for Zachary Bartsch [Opens in a new window]  and
Emily Henderson
Zachary Bartsch*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL, USA
Emily Henderson
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL, USA
*
Corresponding author: Zachary Bartsch; Email: zachary.bartsch@avemaria.edu
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Abstract

We conduct the first modern econometric analysis of the historical deaf population in the United States by incorporating deafness into a model of human capital. We find that the deaf population invested less in observable educational and physical human capital. Lower literacy, employment, and occupational scores also suggest that unobserved human capital investments were not substantial enough to improve productivity to the level of the hearing population. States that subsidized schools for the deaf provided deaf people with improved social capital and access to intangible goods that they pursued at the cost of higher economic achievement. Finally, we argue that substantial lifecycle differences between the hearing and deaf populations have implications for unbiased school attendance and employment rate estimation.

Keywords

Deafhistoryhuman capitaleducation
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , First View , pp. 1 - 35
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Social Science History Association

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