Towns and rural industrialisation in Sweden 1850–1890: A spatial statistical approach

Abstract

Using a spatial statistical analysis we study the relation between rural industrial employment and distance to towns and access to communications in nineteenth century Sweden. Our results show that rural parishes with access to communications had a higher proportion of rural industrial workers than parishes without. In a region with few towns, the south-east of Sweden, parishes close to large towns had a higher proportion of industrial employees than distant parishes in 1850, while no significant correlation was observed in 1890. In a region with a relatively dense urban system, Mälardalen, only in 1890 did parishes close to large towns show a higher proportion of rural industrial workers than did more distant parishes. However, the mean positive effect was negligible beyond 10 km. Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century the immediate urban hinterland was industrialising prior to large scale urbanisation and urban industrialisation.     

Poor relief,labourers’ households and living standards in rural England c.1770–1834: a Bedfordshire case study1

This article estimates the contribution of poor relief to the household economies of the labouring poor in the two case‐study communities of Campton and Shefford, east Bedfordshire, and thereby throws further light on the standard of living of workers during industrialization in the south and east. Utilizing the technique of nominal record linkage between poor law sources and family reconstitution for the period c.1770—c.1834, the article charts the growth in social welfare and estimates the proportion of inhabitants benefiting from regular relief payments, the changing family circumstances of recipients, and the proportion of total income made up by poor relief.     

Belonging and community: understandings of "home" and "friends" among the English poor, 1750-1850

This article is based on unique ‘narratives of the poor’, that is, letters from poor people to their parishes of settlement, petitions to the London Refuge of the Destitute, and letters from mothers to the London Foundling Hospital, with supportive evidence from newspapers. These display fundamental concepts among the English poor, who were often poorly literate, and who comprised the majority of the population. Discussion focuses upon their understandings of ‘home’, ‘belonging’, ‘friends’, and ‘community’. These key concepts are related here to modern discussions, to set important concerns into historical perspective. ‘Friends’, valuably studied by sociologists such as Pahl, had a wide meaning in the past. ‘Home’ meant (alongside abode) one's parish of legal settlement, where one was entitled to poor relief under the settlement/poor laws. This was where one ‘belonged’. Ideas of ‘community’ were held and displayed even at a distance, among frequently migrant poor, who wrote to their parishes showing strong ties of attachment, right, and local obligation. This discussion explores these issues in connection with belonging and identity. It elucidates the meaning and working of poor law settlement, and is also an exploration of popular mentalities and the semi-literate ways in which these were expressed.     

Provisions for the elderly in north-western Europe: an international comparison of almshouses,sixteenth–twentieth centuries

In Early Modern north-western Europe a unique form of charitable foundation developed – almshouses. These were inhabited by elderly men and women, who had led honourable middle-class lives, but had become unable to support themselves. In towns that were rapidly growing through immigration, many elderly people were without income or family support. The masses of the working-class poor had to resort to outdoor relief and other survival strategies or were confined in old people's homes and hospitals. Almshouses, in which residents could maintain their privacy, autonomy and honour, were a viable middle-class alternative. We argue that this type of provision could rise especially in relatively urbanised, monetised north-western Europe. Here, wage labour was the dominant form of income; nuclear families the prevalent family type, and rich citizens had great interests to invest in building religious and urban communities. Around the North Sea, dependent middle-class elderly could entertain early notions of individualism and privacy, which were not catered for by charitable institutions elsewhere.     

取消农业税后的乡镇财政困境及对策

中央取消农业税后,乡镇财政,特别是以农业为主地区的乡镇财政将更加困难,这已严重影响了乡镇的公共服务水平和政府的有效运转,所以乡镇财政困境急需解决。本文从“开源”和“节流”两个方面针对造成现行县乡财政危机的原因进行了分析。并提出了相应的解决对策。     

China＇s New Rural Income Support Policy： Impacts on Grain Production and Rural Income Inequality

I. Introduction Since the beginning of 2004, the Chinese Government has replaced its centuries-old policy of taxing agriculture by a new policy aimed at subsidizing agriculture and stimulating rural incomes. To this end, agricultural taxes – standing at around 8 percent of agricultural incomes – were drastically reduced. By now they are abolished in most provinces. Inaddition, farmers growing grain receive a direct income subsidy, new seed varieties and mechanization are subsidized, and la…     

Pieces of eight,pieces of eight: seamen's earnings and the venture economy of early modern seafaring†

Historians have generally argued that between the medieval period and the eighteenth century seafarers transformed from collaborative adventurers with a share in their vessel to the first international wage‐earning proletariat. This interpretation has drawn upon relatively limited statistical analysis of mariners’ wages, and underestimates the variety of seafarers’ remuneration and economic activities besides wages themselves. This article undertakes a more sustained analysis of seventeenth‐century wage data drawn from the papers of the English High Court of Admiralty, and uses the same evidence to examine other forms of income, both customary payments as part of shipping, and small‐scale trade. Seafarers of all ranks carried their own commodities on all shipping routes, offering an opportunity to increase their income considerably. This evidence confirms that the maritime labour market was hierarchical, and that very often seafarers were poor labourers facing economic insecurity of many kinds. However, it refines the previous interpretation by emphasizing the presence of skilled workers even among the lower levels of this labour market, and by introducing a new dimension to mariners’ economic agency: they were not simply wage‐workers, but also independent participants in a venture economy.     

The reliability of the registration of births and deaths in Finland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Some examples

Abstract

Finland has an abundance of source materials for the study of historical demography. The best-known records are the two sets of tables: the census and mortality tables which were maintained by the parish clergy from 1749 onwards. These recorded the size of the population, to some extent its distribution, and the vital statistics of births, marriages and deaths. The various parish registers formed the basic material for these tables, and information about births and deaths was taken from the registers of births and deaths which exist for Finnish parishes in significant numbers after the Great Northern War (i.e. after 1721). Indeed, for some parishes such registers have survived from as early as the second half of the seventeenth century. Finland therefore has rich documentation available for research into fertility and mortality. However demographic research has previously concentrated upon the more accessible census data, while the registers of births and deaths have been relatively neglected.     

English rural societies and geographical marital endogamy, 1700-1837

This article studies 69 rural parishes in eight English counties, examining changes in geographical marital endogamy. It discovers a consistent upward trend in the proportions of marriages that were parochially endogamous, coupled with a decline in so –called 'foreign' marriages following Hardwickes's Act (1753), and a striking shift towards marriages taking place in the brides' parishes. It explores regional variability in parochial endogamy and stresses the role of settlement sizes. The explanation for rising endogamy highlights factors such as population growth, rising poor relief expenditures, and attitudes resistant to 'outsiders' during a period of precarious subsistence and associated tensions.     

An irrevocable shift: detailing the dynamics of rural poverty in southern England, 1762–1834: a case study

Nearly every conceivable aspect of the old poor law in England appears to have been studied. Yet some fundamental questions about parish‐level provisioning remain hard to answer. These include the amount that people received from the parish, from all sources, each week; how the balance between types of payments shifted over the period, and (correspondingly) within the individual life‐course; the range of services or supplements that such individuals received, from the parish, over the course of their lives; and how this spectrum of relief adjusted to the massive macro‐level changes that we know occurred in the poor relief system between the 1760s and 1834. This study attempts to answer these questions in new depth, by employing a dataset that encompasses all payments to named individuals within the Essex parish of Terling between 1762 and 1834, totalling 143,801 payments to 1,508 recipients. Analysis of this dataset provides new insights into the size, scope, changes, and significance of poor relief in labouring families' lives in southern England in this period.     

Inequality,technology and payments systems

The paper considers the way in which the interaction between technology, population growth and the payments system is responsible for growing inequality in many poor countries. The payments system describes the set of rules governing property rights, access to work and income from work. Payments systems may be classified into traditional, capitalist, mixed and socialist, although most economies exhibit hybrid characteristics. It is argued that capitalist and mixed economy payments systems are largely responsible for those situations where poverty has increased despite growth in per capita income. Finally the paper considers methods of reforming the payments system.     

American colonial incomes, 1650–1774

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 seventeenth‐century 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.     

乡镇财政困难：现状、原因、出路——以安徽省为例

乡镇财政困难主要有收入下降、支出膨胀以及债务负担沉重等方面的表，就其原因从其关联性有根本原因、主要原因、重要原因、直接原因以及导火索等五个方面。对此，笔者认为解决乡镇财政困难的出路可以在分析原因的基础上，结合其表现来具体分析。     

Divergence or convergence?: Income inequality between cities,towns and villages in Japan

Researchers have emphasized different aspects of income inequality, including the statistical evidence of interregional per capita income convergence (following the economic growth theory) and the increase in individual income inequality. This study clarifies these issues, by analyzing the interregional income inequality of cities, towns and villages data in Japan from 1986 to 1999. The results of this empirical analysis show that the interregional income inequality decreases in the 1990s, in spite of the increase in individual income inequality.     

Living standards and mortality since the middle ages

Existing studies find little connection between living standards and mortality in England, but go back only to the sixteenth century. Using new data on inheritances, we extend estimates of mortality back to the mid‐thirteenth century and find, by contrast, that deaths from unfree tenants to the nobility were strongly affected by living standards. Looking at a large sample of parishes after 1540, we find that the positive check had weakened considerably by 1650 even though living standards were static at best, but persisted in London for another century despite its higher wages. In both cases the disappearance of the positive check coincided with the introduction of systematic poor relief, suggesting that government action may have played a role in breaking the link between harvest failure and mass mortality.     

湖南、湖北两省乡镇综合配套改革差异比较分析

为适应社会主义市场经济体制的发展需要,以改革促发展,解决制约农村发展带长期性、基础性、根本性的体制和机制性问题,切实提高对“三农“的服务水平,湖南、湖北两省进行了乡镇合并、乡镇行政机关改革、乡镇事业单位改革、县乡财政体制改革、乡镇教育体制改革等乡镇综合配套改革.本文通过分析认为,湖南、湖北两省乡镇综合配套改革存在着许多共同之处,但在乡镇事业单位改革和县乡财政体制改革方面却存在着十分明显的差异;并从与改革目标的接近程度、改革的彻底性和理想性、改革成本和改革成效等方面对湖南、湖北两省乡镇综合配套改革做了评价.     

Community poverty and inequality in western China: A tale of three villages in Guizhou Province

Using a census survey of households in Guizhou Province, this paper examines the patterns of village poverty and inequality and their major correlates. The results show that poverty incidences vary greatly among villages and inequality is relatively high within villages in these impoverished areas. Although agriculture is still the major source of livelihood in this inland western region, income from local nonfarm jobs and remittance is more unevenly distributed and accounts for the largest share of overall income inequality. Surprisingly, blood donation is another major source of cash income. On the expenditure side, health care was found to be one of the most important sources of inequality. The paper also found that the distribution of assets, particularly land holdings, contributes to overall income inequality.     

The geography of urbanization — Sweden and Finland,c. 1570–1770

Abstract

In this article Swedish urbanization is considered as a long term growth cycle. The urban system expanded both geographically and demographically during the seventeenth century. Many new towns were founded, and urban growth rates were generally high. Swedish urban geography was characterized by peripheral expansion mainly towards northern Sweden. At the same time there was a strong tendency towards the centralization of urban resources. The capital city, Stockholm, evolved from being a medium-sized town to becoming a city worthy of Sweden s great power status. During the eighteenth century several of the seventeenth century trends were reversed: the centralising tendency ended and indeed regressed, while general urban growth slowed down, turning into an ‘urban growth from below’. Stockholm became a stagnation metropolis' and the eastern-central part of Sweden experienced an urban setback relative to western Sweden, where several towns, including Gothenburg, profited from their close connections with the expansive markets of northern and western Europe.     

Mites and merchants: the crisis of English wool and textile trade revisited,c. 1275–1330†

On the basis of 7,871 manorial accounts from 601 sheep-rearing demesnes and 187 tithe receipts from 15 parishes, this article addresses the origins, scale, and impact of the wool and textile production crisis in England, c. 1275–1350. The article argues that recurrent outbreaks of scab disease depressed sheep population and wool production levels until the early 1330s. The disease, coupled with warfare and taxation, also had a decisive role in depressing the volumes of wool exports. Despite this fact, wool merchants were still conducting business with major wool producers, who desperately needed access to the capital to replenish their flocks.     

How Did Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Become Heavily Indebted? Reviewing Two Decades of Debt Relief

The paradox of debt is that heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) became heavily indebted after two decades of debt relief efforts. Average policies in HIPCs 1980–97 were worse than other less-developed countries (LDCs), controlling for income. Terms of trade and wars do not show a different trend in HIPCs than in non-HIPC LDCs. Financing HIPCs shifted away from private and bilateral nonconcessional sources toward International Development Assistance and other multilateral concessional financing––but this implicit form of debt relief also failed to reduce net present value debt. The record is not encouraging for the success of current debt relief efforts.