The long march of history: Farm wages, population, and economic growth, England 1209–1869¹

Abstract

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Land markets and the morcellation of holdings in Pre-Plague England and Pre-Famine Ireland

“…In Pre-Plague England the erosion of real wages was even more pronounced. The purchasing power of the daily wage of an English agricultural worker fell by between a quarter and a third during the second half of the thirteenth century and during the famine decade of the 1310s eroded to only 62 per cent the level it had been in the 1250s (Clark, 2007). Although in both situations the momentum of population growth eventually slowed, the build up of population pressure upon the land was only finally relieved by a massive demographic haemorrhage.…”

The Consumer Revolution: Turning Point in Human History, or Statistical Artifact?

“…It has been known since the time of James Thorold Rogers in the nineteenth century that real wages in pre-industrial England were extraordinarily high between 1350 and 1550 by the standards of 1800. Successive refinements of these wage series, and refinements of cost of living indices have done nothing to change that early impression (Clark, 2005(Clark, , 2007a. Including other elements of income such as land rents, house rents and returns on capital gives an overall estimate of income that is less favorable for 1350-1550.…”

Why Did the Industrial Revolution Start in Britain?

“…Besides the construction of historical national accounts tracing the evolution of GDP per capita in Northwestern Europe and other regions of the world, a number of studies have also been produced to estimate preindustrial wages and thus check more precisely the hypothesis of "Little Divergence" of living standards across societies before the industrial revolution (see e.g. Allen, 2001Allen, , 2005aAllen, and 2009avan Zanden, 2005a;Broadberry and Bishnupriya, 2006;Clark, 2007b;Hersh and Voth, 2009;Pamuk and van Zanden 2010;Allen, Bassino et al, 2011;Allen, Murphy et al, 2012) (Goldstone, 2015). According to the early modernists, the "Great Divergence" between Europe and Asia would thus root in a "Little Divergence" occurring during the centuries preceding the industrial revolution (Broadberry, 2014).…”