Malthus to Modernity: Income, Fertility and Economic Growth in England, 1500-1914
نویسنده
چکیده
The Industrial Revolution seemingly involved two profound changes separated by 120 years: the classic Industrial Revolution of 1770, and the demographic transition of 1890. The first was the appearance of higher innovation rates, creating modern rates of output growth. The second a decline in fertility, first in the upper classes, then among the masses, that channeled all economic growth into higher living standards. That 120 year chasm has been unbridgeable in unified accounts of the transition to modern growth. Measuring economic status and net fertility from wills we show that the demographic transition actually coincided with the Industrial Revolution. Net fertility among the rich fell rapidly towards modern levels after 1770. But aggregate fertility rose in these years because net fertility among the poor at the same time rose to equal that of the rich. Only in the 1890s did aggregate fertility rates begin to decline.
منابع مشابه
Malthus to Modernity: Wealth, Status and Fertility in England, 1500-1879
A key challenge to theories of long-run economic growth has been linking the onset of modern growth with the move to modern fertility limitation. A notable puzzle for these theories is that modern growth in England began around 1780, 100 years before there was seemingly any movement to limit fertility. Here we show that the aggregate data on fertility in England before 1880 conceals significant...
متن کاملThe Origins of Modern Growth: Fertility and Human Capital in England, 1500-1914
Recent theories of the origins of modern growth stress an improvement in human capital through reduced fertility and more intensive investment in the nurturing and education of children. But it is hard to directly test the proposition that reducing family sizes improves the "quality" of children in the modern world. What tests have been done have produced few positive signs of an association. U...
متن کاملMalthus was right after all: poor relief and birth rates in southeastern England.
The payment of child allowances to laborers with large families was widespread in early nineteenth-century England. This paper tests Thomas Malthus's hypothesis that child allowances caused the birth rate to increase. A cross-sectional regression model is estimated to explain variations in birth rates across parishes in 1826-30. Birth rates are found to be related to child allowances, income, a...
متن کاملPopulation, Food, and Knowledge: A Simple Unified Growth Theory
This paper provides a unified growth theory, i.e. a model that explains the very long-run economic and demographic development path of industrialized economies, stretching from the pre-industrial era to the present-day and beyond. Making strict use of Malthus’ (1798) so-called preventive check hypothesis – that fertility rates vary inversely with the price of food – the current study offers a n...
متن کامل