Human capital from a household perspective: knowledge investments in early modern Antwerp, Ghent, Lier and Aalst.

As evidenced by this short state of the art, there is an urgent need for a micro-level approach in which education and the mechanisms behind human capital formation are analyzed comprehensively. This project aims to fulfill this requirement by 1° introducing a new kind of source to quantify the investments in various types of education and to identify the different causal factors involved from a household perspective; and 2° analyzing the situation in four distinct early modern cities in the Southern Low Countries, the first industrializing region on the continent.

Keywords:HUMAN CAPITAL, EARLY MODERN HISTORY, LOW COUNTRIES

Disciplines:Economic history, History