A  Over the last decade, a huge database about the lives of southwest German villagers between 1600 and 1900 has been compiled by a team led by Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie at Cambridge University's Faculty of Economics. It includes court records, guild ledgers, parish registers, village censuses, tax lists and – the most recent addition – 9,000 handwritten inventories listing over a million personal possessions belonging to ordinary women and men across three centuries. Ogilvie, who discovered the inventories in the archives of two German communities 30 years ago, believes they may hold the answer to a conundrum that has long puzzled economists: the lack of evidence for a causal link between education and a country's economic growth. 

A  在过去的十年中，剑桥大学经济学院的谢拉-奥格尔维（Sheilagh Ogilvie）教授领导的一个团队编制了一个有关 1600 年至 1900 年间德国西南部村民生活的庞大数据库。其中包括法院记录、行会分类账、教区登记簿、村庄人口普查、纳税清单以及最新增加的 9000 份手写清单，这些清单列出了三个世纪中普通男女的 100 多万件个人财产。奥格尔维 30 年前在两个德国社区的档案中发现了这些清单，他认为这些清单可能解答了一个长期困扰经济学家的难题：教育与国家经济增长之间缺乏因果关系的证据。

B  As Ogilvie explains, 'Education helps us to work more productively, invent better technology, and earn more … surely it must be critical for economic growth? But, if you look back through history, there's no evidence that having a high literacy rate made a country industrialise earlier.' Between 1600 and 1900, England had only mediocre literacy rates by European standards, yet its economy grew fast and it was the first country to industrialise. During this period, Germany and Scandinavia had excellent literacy rates, but their economies grew slowly and they industrialised late. 'Modern cross-country analyses have also struggled to find evidence that education causes economic growth, even though there is plenty of evidence that growth increases education,' she adds. 

B  正如奥格尔维所解释的那样，'教育帮助我们更有效地工作，发明更好的技术，赚取更多的收入......教育对经济增长肯定至关重要吧？但是，如果你回顾历史，没有证据表明识字率高的国家会更早实现工业化。1600 年至 1900 年间，按照欧洲标准，英国的识字率仅为中等水平，但其经济增长迅速，是第一个实现工业化的国家。在此期间，德国和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的识字率非常高，但其经济增长缓慢，工业化也较晚。她补充说："现代跨国分析也很难找到教育导致经济增长的证据，尽管有大量证据表明经济增长会提高教育水平。

C  In the handwritten inventories that Ogilvie is analysing are the belongings of women and men at marriage, remarriage and death. From badger skins to Bibles, sewing machines to scarlet bodices – the villagers' entire worldly goods are included. Inventories of agricultural equipment and craft tools reveal economic activities; ownership of books and educationrelated objects like pens and slates suggests how people learned. In addition, the tax lists included in the database record the value of farms, workshops, assets and debts; signatures and people's estimates of their age indicate literacy and numeracy levels; and court records reveal obstacles (such as the activities of the guilds*) that stifled industry. 

C在奥格尔维分析的手写清单中，有男女结婚、再婚和死亡时的财产。从獾皮到《圣经》，从缝纫机到大红色紧身衣--村民们的全部家当都包括在内。农业设备和手工艺工具的清单揭示了经济活动；书籍和教育相关物品（如钢笔和石板）的所有权表明了人们的学习方式。此外，数据库中的税单记录了农场、作坊、资产和债务的价值；签名和人们对自己年龄的估计表明了识字和算术水平；法庭记录揭示了阻碍工业发展的障碍（如行会*的活动）。

Previous studies usually had just one way of linking education with economic growth – the presence of schools and printing presses, perhaps, or school enrolment, or the ability to sign names. According to Ogilvie, the database provides multiple indicators for the same individuals, making it possible to analyse links between literacy, numeracy, wealth, and industriousness, for individual women and men over the long term. 

以往的研究通常只有一种方法将教育与经济增长联系起来--也许是学校和印刷机的存在，也许是入学率，也许是签署姓名的能力。根据奥格尔维的说法，该数据库为同一个人提供了多个指标，从而可以对男女个人的识字率、计算能力、财富和勤劳程度之间的联系进行长期分析。

D  Ogilvie and her team have been building the vast database of material possessions on top of their full demographic reconstruction of the people who lived in these two German communities. 'We can follow the same people – and their descendants – across 300 years of educational and economic change,' she says. Individual lives have unfolded before their eyes. Stories like that of the 24-year-olds Ana Regina and Magdalena Riethmüllerin, who were chastised in 1707 for reading books in church instead of listening to the sermon. 'This tells us they were continuing to develop their reading skills at least a decade after leaving school,' explains Ogilvie. The database also reveals the case of Juliana Schweickherdt, a 50-year-old spinster living in the small Black Forest community of Wildberg, who was reprimanded in 1752 by the local weavers' guild for 'weaving cloth and combing wool, counter to the guild ordinance'. When Juliana continued taking jobs reserved for male guild members, she was summoned before the guild court and told to pay a fine equivalent to one third of a servant's annual wage. It was a small act of defiance by today's standards, but it reflects a time when laws in Germany and elsewhere regulated people's access to labour markets. The dominance of guilds not only prevented people from using their skills, but also held back even the simplest industrial innovation. 

D  奥格尔维和她的团队在对这两个德国社区的居民进行全面人口重建的基础上，建立了庞大的物质财富数据库。她说："我们可以跟踪相同的人及其后代，跨越 300 年的教育和经济变迁。个人的生活在他们眼前展开。像 24 岁的安娜-雷吉娜（Ana Regina）和马格达莱纳-里特米勒林（Magdalena Riethmüllerin）的故事，她们在 1707 年因为在教堂看书而不是听布道而受到责罚。奥格尔维解释说："这告诉我们，她们在离开学校至少十年后仍在继续发展自己的阅读技能。该数据库还揭示了朱莉安娜-施魏克赫德特（Juliana Schweickherdt）的案例，她是一名 50 岁的老处女，住在黑森林小社区威尔德堡，1752 年因 “违反行会条例织布和梳理羊毛 ”而受到当地织布行会的训斥。当朱莉安娜继续从事为男性行会成员保留的工作时，她被传唤到行会法庭，并被告知要支付相当于仆人年薪三分之一的罚款。按照今天的标准，这只是一个小小的反抗行为，但它反映了当时德国和其他地方的法律对人们进入劳动力市场的管制。行会的主导地位不仅阻碍了人们使用自己的技能，还阻碍了最简单的工业创新。

E  The data-gathering phase of the project has been completed and now, according to Ogilvie, it is time 'to ask the big questions'. One way to look at whether education causes economic growth is to 'hold wealth constant'. This involves following the lives of different people with the same level of wealth over a period of time. If wealth is constant, it is possible to discover whether education was, for example, linked to the cultivation of new crops, or to the adoption of industrial innovations like sewing machines. The team will also ask what aspect of education helped people engage more with productive and innovative activities. Was it, for instance, literacy, numeracy, book ownership, years of schooling? Was there a threshold level – a tipping point – that needed to be reached to affect economic performance? 

E  项目的数据收集阶段已经完成，奥格尔维认为，现在是 “提出重大问题 ”的时候了。研究教育是否会导致经济增长的一种方法是 “保持财富不变”。这包括在一段时间内跟踪财富水平相同的不同人的生活。如果财富不变，就有可能发现教育是否与新作物的种植或缝纫机等工业创新的采用有关。研究小组还将询问教育的哪些方面有助于人们更多地参与生产和创新活动。例如，是识字率、计算能力、图书拥有量还是受教育年限？影响经济表现是否需要达到一个临界点？

F  Ogilvie hopes to start finding answers to these questions over the next few years. One thing is already clear, she says: the relationship between education and economic growth is far from straightforward. 'German-speaking central Europe is an excellent laboratory for testing theories of economic growth,' she explains. Between 1600 and 1900, literacy rates and book ownership were high and yet the region remained poor. It was also the case that local guilds and merchant associations were extremely powerful and legislated against anything that undermined their monopolies. In villages throughout the region, guilds blocked labour migration and resisted changes that might reduce their influence. 

F  奥格尔维希望在未来几年开始寻找这些问题的答案。她说，有一点已经很清楚：教育与经济增长之间的关系远非简单明了。她解释说："中欧德语区是检验经济增长理论的绝佳实验室。1600 年至 1900 年间，该地区的识字率和图书拥有量都很高，但仍然很贫穷。此外，当地的行会和商人协会也非常强大，他们通过立法来反对任何破坏其垄断地位的行为。在整个地区的村庄里，行会阻止劳动力迁移，抵制可能削弱其影响力的变革。

'Early findings suggest that the potential benefits of education for the economy can be held back by other barriers, and this has implications for today,' says Ogilvie. 'Huge amounts are spent improving education in developing countries, but this spending can fail to deliver economic growth if restrictions block people – especially women and the poor – from using their education in economically productive ways. If economic institutions are poorly set up, for instance, education can't lead to growth.'  

奥格尔维说："早期的研究结果表明，教育对经济的潜在益处可能会受到其他障碍的阻碍，这对今天也有影响。发展中国家在改善教育方面投入了巨额资金，但如果各种限制阻碍人们（尤其是妇女和穷人）将教育用于具有经济效益的方面，那么这些支出可能无法实现经济增长。例如，如果经济体制不健全，教育就无法带来增长。

* guild: an association of artisans or merchants which oversees the practice of their craft or trade in a particular area 

* 行会：由工匠或商人组成的协会，负责监督某一特定地区的手工业或贸易活动。