We investigate books as an indicator of human capital using extraordinary, individual-level data on book ownership and signature literacy for a population of German women and men between 1610 and 1900. Although book ownership was very high from an early date, it was associated with signature literacy, gender, urbanization, and wealth in ways inconsistent with its having registered economically relevant human capital. The books people owned were overwhelmingly religious, as elsewhere in pre-modern Europe. People consumed books for multifarious purposes, many of them non-economic. In this pre-modern economy, books were not a good indicator of economically relevant human capital for the population at large, which creates doubt about their use for this purpose more generally.

我们使用关于 1610 年至 1900 年间德国女性和男性人口的书籍所有权和签名识字率的非凡的个人层面数据来调查书籍作为人力资本的指标。虽然书籍所有权从早期开始就非常高，但它与标志性的识字率、性别、城市化和财富的方式与其登记的经济相关人力资本不一致。与前现代欧洲其他地方一样，人们拥有的书籍绝大多数是宗教书籍。人们消费书籍的目的多种多样，其中许多是非经济目的。在这个前现代经济体中，书籍并不是反映广大人口经济相关人力资本的良好指标，这使得人们更普遍地怀疑它们用于此目的。