Conjectural Estimates of Economic Growth in the Lower South, 1720 to 1800

Mancall, Peter C.; Rosenbloom, Joshua L.; Weiß, Thomas

doi:10.3386/h0126

Cited by 8 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Rather, our estimates are in the middle of several competing estimates for the nation as a whole (Table 2). Our 1800 estimates for the Lower South match those of Mancall, Rosenbloom, and Weiss (2003), even though we used the income approach and they used the production approach. It might seem comforting that our 1800 estimates are so close to others.…”

Section: B the Income Level Estimates For 1800supporting

confidence: 53%

“…Yet, we can help guide the search for the magnitude of the and by an even bigger 49.7 percent in the Lower South (Mancall et al 2003 estimate an even larger 67 percent), yielding a decline of 24.4 percent for the thirteen colonies as a whole. 28 The most painful of these shocks was the loss of well over half of all trade with England between 1771 and 1791.…”

Section: Long-run Growth Implications 1774-1860mentioning

confidence: 99%

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American Incomes 1774-1860

Lindert¹,

Williamson²

2012

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Building what we call social tables, this paper quantifies the level and inequality of American incomes from 1774 to 1860. In 1774 the American colonies had average incomes exceeding those of the Mother Country, even when slave households are included in the aggregate. Between 1774 and 1790, this income advantage over Britain was lost, due to the severe dislocation caused by the fight for Independence. Then between 1790 and 1860 US income per capita grew even faster than previous scholars have estimated. We also find that the South was initially much richer than the North on the eve of Revolution, but then suffered a severe reversal of fortune, so that by 1840 its white population was already poorer than free Northerners. In terms of inequality, our estimates suggest that American colonists had much more equal incomes than did households in England and Wales around 1774. Indeed, New England and the Middle Colonies appear to have been more egalitarian than anywhere else in the measureable world. Income inequality rose dramatically between 1774 and 1860, especially in the South.

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Section: B the Income Level Estimates For 1800supporting

confidence: 53%

Section: Long-run Growth Implications 1774-1860mentioning

confidence: 99%

American Incomes 1774-1860

Lindert¹,

Williamson²

2012

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“…GDP in most years, and declined on a per capita basis at 0.04 percent per year, about the same rate as the decline in GDP per capita (Mancall, Rosenbloom and Weiss 2003).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…10 Our earlier analysis of the economy of the Lower South (Mancall, Rosenbloom and Weiss 2003) revealed that the region, despite its extensive rice and indigo exports, had a poor record of intensive economic growth. Exports and output (i.e.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic growth in the Mid-Atlantic region: Conjectural estimates for 1720 to 1800

Rosenbloom

Weiß

2014

Explorations in Economic History

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We construct decadal estimates of GDP per capita for the colonies and states of the Mid Atlantic region between 1720 and 1800. They show that the region likely achieved modest improvements in per capita GDP over this period despite a number of demographic factors that tended to slow the pace of growth. Nonetheless the rate of growth we find is below that commonly assumed to have prevailed in eighteenth century North America and calls those estimates into question. The striking feature of the region's economy in the eighteenth century was not rising livingstandards, but its ability to achieve rapid extensive growth without a decline in living standards. To contemporaries this extensive growth and short-term volatility in incomes must have been much more visible than any trend improvement in overall well-being.This work is an outgrowth of a larger research project carried out in collaboration with Peter C. Mancall. We gratefully acknowledge his extensive contributions both to that larger work and to this paper. We have received helpful comments from seminar participants at

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“…Greeley (1925) documented the clearing of these forests between 1620 and 1920. Meanwhile per capita income rose steadily, from $752 in 1720 (Mancall et al, 2000) to $1986in 1920(Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2006. Thus, forest naturalness must have gotten much worse with increasing income before it started getting better.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Ecological integrity as an economic variable: An application to forested landscapes in the southern United States

Raunikar

Buongiorno

2008

JFE

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Ecological integrity is important to fully describe the development of an economy. We calculated an aggregate index that quantifies the closeness of a forested region to a natural state. This naturalness index was based on the diversity of native tree species and sizes for ecological subregions in a seral condition. The index used the spatial-temporal array of sample plots from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database of the USDA Forest Service. In the 70 survey units of the southern US between 1961 and 2005 the naturalness of forests generally improved with per capita personal income and population. The increase with income was consistent with the hypothesis of an environmental Kuznets curve for forested landscapes.

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Conjectural Estimates of Economic Growth in the Lower South, 1720 to 1800

Cited by 8 publications

References 25 publications

American Incomes 1774-1860

American Incomes 1774-1860

Economic growth in the Mid-Atlantic region: Conjectural estimates for 1720 to 1800

Ecological integrity as an economic variable: An application to forested landscapes in the southern United States

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