One Hundred and Seventy Years of Real Wages in Colombia [Ciento setenta años de salarios reales en Colombia]

In the course of modern economic history, real wages have been a good indicator of the material living standards of the working class. This document presents real wage series for different sectors and periods of time in Colombia. Relying on data compiled by several authors, our main conclusion is that in the last 170 years Colombian real wages have increased less than the GDP per capita in most of the studied periods, except for the last 50 years. This significant drop in the participation of employees can be interpreted as deterioration in income distribution and, therefore, may be a partial cause of unequal distribution of income in Colombia today.

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