Human capital of the US deaf population from 1850 to 1910

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.