Explorations in Economic History 

TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the history of prices and wages in European cities from the fourteenth century to the First World War and show that the divergence in real incomes observed in the mid-nineteenth century was produced between 1500 and 1750 as incomes fell in most European cities but were maintained (not increased) in the economic leaders.

TL;DR: A closer look at the dawn of social spending before 1930 as mentioned in this paper reinterprets the timing, sources, and effects of its rise and finds that income growth played less of a role in shaping the rise of social transfers than did democracy, demography, and religion.

TL;DR: In this paper, a new data base, purchasing power parity-adjusted real wage rates for unskilled labor, is presented, with a focus on four distinct regimes: 1830 to midcentury, midcentury to World War I, the interwar decades, and the post-World War II experience.