Myself and a student coauthor worked hard on our article that is now published in Social Science History. It’s the first modern statistical analysis of the historical deaf population. We bring an economic lens and statistical treatment to a topic that previously included much anecdotal evidence and case study. We hope that future authors can improve on our work in ways that meet and surpass the quantitative methods that we employed.
Our contributions include:
- A human capital model of deafness that’s agnostic about its productivity implications and treats deaf individuals as if they made decisions rationally.
- A better understanding of school attendance rates and the ages at which they attended.
- Deaf children were much more likely to be neither in school nor employed earlier in US history.
- The negative impact of state ‘school for the deaf’ availability on subsequent economic outcomes among deaf adults. We speculate that they attended schools due to the social benefits of access to community.
- Deaf workers did not avoid occupations where their deafness would be incidentally detectable by trade partners, implying that animus discrimination was not systemically important for economic outcomes.
- By 1910, deaf students attended school at greater rates and at older ages than hearing individuals, causing later workforce entry and providing less relevant work experience.
- The distribution of occupations among hearing and deaf workers diverged as more hearing workers were able to engage in more impersonal trade and firm organization that emerged in an increasingly commercial economy (and maybe leverage emerging remote communication technologies).
- Deaf individuals were less likely to hold occupations in industries that required verbal skills and more likely to work in loud environments. These results mimic those of being an immigrant or being male, both of which are associated with a comparative disadvantage in verbal communication aptitude (relative to women). Such as results is consistent with the human capital model.
- It’s also possible that the increasing popularity of teaching deaf students to speak orally in the late 1800s harmed economic outcomes after attending school. We save that for another time!
Bartsch, Zachary, and Emily Henderson. 2025. “Human Capital of the US Deaf Population from 1850 to 1910.” Social Science History, April, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2025.6.
Economist Writing Every Day 