Data and Codes for: Charlie Don't Surf: New Estimates on Literacy Rates and Occupational Structure in Italy before Italy, 1815

Attributing the origins of the North-South literacy divide to its pre-unitary legacies requires evidence about the level of literacy rates at the time of the \emph{ancien r\'egimes}. Using a random sample of marriage certificates from around 1815, I collect new evidence on literacy rates in Italy and occupational structures of cohorts who could attend school before Napoleon. Literacy, skills, and occupational mobilities of sons and daughters are generally low, with important North-South gaps. I attribute persistent regional gaps to spatially different but intergenerationally immobile occupational structures: as long as path-dependence kept demand for literacy low, schooling provision reforms remained ineffective.