Abstract
This paper provides estimates of wage dispersion in
nineteenth-century
and documents the compression of
the pay distribution between 1856 and
1905. A decomposition of inequality changes by sector and
gender leads to two
conclusions. First, that most of
the changes occurred within each industry, of
which the textile industry stands
out; and second, that although traditional
analyses of changes in earnings
inequality tend to ignore female labour and
earnings arising from piecework, these
seem to be, together with the new factory
discipline, the key factors in
explaining shifts in earnings inequality in industrializing
societies.