Annual wages in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1800 to 1860 and the beginning of the Italian regional divide

Abstract This study presents new urban and rural annual wage series for the South of Italy before the unification. The use of annual wages overcomes the intrinsic biases of daily wages and mirrors the effective living standards of unskilled workers making regional comparisons more reliable. The comparisons with existing analogous series for the centre and the north of the country show a divide at the time of Italy’s unification in line with the majoritarian view expressed in earlier studies. However, unexpected convergence trends emerge at the urban level, mostly before 1840. Instead, rural areas consistently displayed divergence that has been worsening since 1850.