Wealth estimates for the New England Colonies, 1650–1709

Anderson, Terry L.

doi:10.1016/0014-4983(75)90015-7

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In the last few decades, there has been growing literature over the role of institutions on the economic performances of societies, particularly for the pre-industrial period (Kennedy, 1988;North, 1990;Tilly, 1990;Greif, 2006;Van Zanden, 2009;North et al, 2009;Acemoğlu & Robinson, 2012;Hoffman, 2015;Rubin, 2017). The wealth (capital) accumulation has also become one of the most important debates in economic history literature (Jones, 1970;Anderson, 1975;Shammas, 1978;Van Zanden, 1995;Hoffman et al, 2002;Chor, 2005;Bengtsson et al, 2018). The main argument of this literature has been that each society developed diverse institutional mechanisms to establish welfare-enhancing mechanisms during the early modern period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farklı Sosyo-Ekonomik Gruplara Göre Osmanlı Bireylerinin Zenginliği, 1650-1918: Kurumsal Değişim Bağlamında Betimsel Bir Analiz

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GÖKSAL

KIRMIZIKUŞAK

2022

Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Vizyoner Dergisi

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The study offers a descriptive analysis of individual wealth in the Ottoman Empire, employing a new dataset from inheritance records of 36 different provinces located in Anatolia. The main purpose is to contribute to the discussion on the relationship between wealth inequality and changing institutional structures, spanning from 1650 to 1918. The limitations of data entail restrictions to construct a quantitative research, and hence, the study provides an implicit analysis on this relationship. A new dataset on individual wealth, however, allow to present a descriptive analysis in a long-term perspective. Establishing information on individual wealth by socio-economic groups, the study estimates wealth inequality according to Gini coefficients. This estimates also include a comparative analysis among different groups, including four quartiles starting from the wealthiest 25 percent. Our findings underlie the importance of the role of institutional change over the wealth inequality. We suggest the wealth inequality is higher under the periods of decentralized institutions, particularly during the pre-industrial period. This trend has become better with series of political, economic and institutional reforms towards centralization during the second half of the nineteenth century.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Farklı Sosyo-Ekonomik Gruplara Göre Osmanlı Bireylerinin Zenginliği, 1650-1918: Kurumsal Değişim Bağlamında Betimsel Bir Analiz

Altay

GÖKSAL

KIRMIZIKUŞAK

2022

Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Vizyoner Dergisi

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“…For Jamaica, Burnard (2001: 514) reports that women had 10 percent of probate inventories circa 1774. For evidence on the colonial United States, see the following text, and Anderson 1975: 172; Carr and Menard 1999: 115; and Shammas 1994: 17. Note that attention to the gains of propertied women across the nineteenth century does not preclude recognition of the persistent economic and social subordination of women.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Lebsock's count of probated decedents is comprised of those “who left wills along with those who had sufficient estate to warrant the appointment of an administrator (the latter were located in the minute books)” (Lebsock 1984: 133, 289). Note that “probated decedents” is a larger population than the one represented in probate-based studies of wealth (most famously, Jones 1980, but see also, e.g., Anderson 1975, Burnard 2001, Carr and Menard 1999, Di Matteo and George 1992, and Main 1975). Those wealth studies work with probate inventories, but to varying degrees the estates of probated decedents were not inventoried (for such decedents, the probates include records such as wills, administration bonds, and accounts; for a useful overview of probate records, see Shammas et al 1987: 217–18).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Narrowing of the Gender Wealth Gap across the Nineteenth-Century United States

McDevitt¹,

Irwin²

2017

Soc. sci. hist.

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Shammas (1994) documented the expansion of women's wealth holding across the nineteenth-century United States, explaining it as the result of the married women's property acts (MWPAs) passed in most of states starting circa 1840. We look at the timing of the expansion of women's wealth holding, drawing on archival and published evidence from probate records. Starting with Richmond, Virginia, and its agricultural hinterland, we consider a variety of places, urban and rural, in the South and North, to suggest a general view of the eastern United States. In rough outline, while colonial women were at most one-tenth of probated wealth holders, antebellum women were at least one-fifth. Levels of women's wealth holding increased even more. The substantial narrowing of the gender wealth gap cannot be attributed to the MWPAs that followed. Perhaps those acts will explain the further narrowing of the gender wealth gap in the later nineteenth century, but that narrowing might better be understood as a continuation of previous trends. Our results remind that some legal reforms can better be understood as reflections than causes of social change.

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“…New England had high growth rates to 1680, and slow to 1710, according to Anderson, ‘Wealth estimates’, p. 171; idem, ‘Economic growth’, tab. 3.…”

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American colonial incomes, 1650–1774

Lindert

Williamson²

2015

The Economic History Review

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New data now allow conjectures on the levels of real and nominal incomes in the 13 American colonies. New England was the poorest region, and the South was the richest. Colonial per capita incomes rose only very slowly if at all, for five reasons: productivity growth was slow; population in the low-income (but subsistence-plus) frontier grew much faster than that in the high-income coastal settlements; child dependency rates were high and probably even rising; the terms of trade were extremely volatile, presumably suppressing investment in export sectors; and the terms of trade rose very slowly, if at all, in the North, although faster in the South. All of this checked the growth of colony-wide per capita income after a seventeenthcentury boom. The American colonies led Great Britain in purchasing power per capita from 1700, and possibly from 1650, until 1774, even counting slaves in the population. That is, average purchasing power in America led Britain early, when Americans were British. The common view that American per capita income did not overtake that of Britain until the start of the twentieth century appears to be off the mark by two centuries or more. bs_bs_banner 1 Mancall, Rosenbloom, and Weiss, 'Conjectural estimates'; Rosenbloom and Weiss, 'Economic growth'. 2 Lindert and Williamson, 'American incomes'. 3 Our exploration of these issues is subject to two omissions.The first is that we exclude Native Americans, due to the paucity of information on their living conditions. Second, we see no way to place any monetary value on freedom, nor can we quantify inhumane treatment. Thus, we only estimate slave consumption, a much narrower concept than their well-being. 4 It was probably not the richest of all the British American colonies in terms of white incomes. What little we know about white wealth, and indirectly about income, in the BritishWest Indies suggests that white incomes were higher there than in any mainland colony. So thought McCusker and Menard, Economy of British America, tab. 3.3, p. 61, and Higman, 'British West Indies', 'Prodigious riches',, has made the comparison more concrete, based on especially rich data for Jamaica. He finds that in 1774 the average white man in the British West Indies had over 17 times the physical wealth of his counterpart in the Thirteen Colonies, and the corresponding per capita ratio was nearly 2.5 even after including slaves in the population denominator.These ratios might be lowered a bit if one divided these sterling figures by the cost of living, which was presumably higher in the West Indies, yet it is hard to imagine that the ratios would be reduced to parity.

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Wealth estimates for the New England Colonies, 1650–1709

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

Farklı Sosyo-Ekonomik Gruplara Göre Osmanlı Bireylerinin Zenginliği, 1650-1918: Kurumsal Değişim Bağlamında Betimsel Bir Analiz

Farklı Sosyo-Ekonomik Gruplara Göre Osmanlı Bireylerinin Zenginliği, 1650-1918: Kurumsal Değişim Bağlamında Betimsel Bir Analiz

The Narrowing of the Gender Wealth Gap across the Nineteenth-Century United States

American colonial incomes, 1650–1774

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