Real inequality in the early modern Low Countries: the city of ’s‐Hertogenbosch, 1500–1660

This article studies the welfare effects of economic growth in the early modern Low Countries. It applies the recently developed concept of ‘real inequality’ to a case study of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century ’s‐Hertogenbosch in the Southern Netherlands and demonstrates, by incorporating relative price movements, that specific (and in this case stagnant) nominal income inequality trajectories may disguise underlying shifts in real inequality that are influenced by socially biased relative prices. The analysis is then extended to include changes in demography and household size, which reveals a second important limitation in the study of long‐term economic inequality. In contrast to the stagnation and eventual decline in nominal inequality seen in ’s‐Hertogenbosch during the long sixteenth century (1500–1650), this broadened concept of ‘augmented’ real inequality in fact suggests the occurrence of a significant upturn during the first half of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, while nominal inequality had decreased, real inequality appears to have been higher by the middle of the seventeenth century than it had been around 1500. The study of global and/or long‐term inequality, in particular, would benefit greatly from a proper social, economic, and historical contextualization of these trends, not least in terms of the social biases in relative prices and household composition.     

Prices and production: agricultural supply response in fourteenth‐century England

This article challenges the growing consensus in the literature that medieval manorial managers were price responsive in their production decisions. Using prices of and acreages planted with wheat, barley, and oats on manors held by the bishop of Winchester from 1325 to 1370, price elasticities of supply are estimated for each grain in aggregate and on each particular manor. Aggregate price elasticities of supply for wheat, barley, and oats were rarely statistically significant and when significant were very low compared with elasticities estimated for developing and developed countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The low levels of agricultural supply response in fourteenth‐century England suggest that commercialization was not as dominant in the medieval economy as has been argued. Thus, structural changes in the economy, such as the leasing of demesnes, the growth of wage labour, and the end of villeinage, may have been more important than price fluctuations in driving long‐run economic change after the Black Death. Likewise, a shift from low price responsiveness to higher price responsiveness could have been an important part of the capitalist transformation of agriculture in the early modern period.     

Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre‐industrial economy: Old Castile (Spain) in the middle of the eighteenth century

Research on economic inequality in early modern Europe is complicated by the lack of appropriate data for reconstructing income or wealth distributions. This article presents a study of income inequality in mid‐eighteenth‐century Old Castile (Spain) using the Ensenada Cadastre, a census conducted between 1749 and 1759. The article describes the information provided by this census and then discusses its advantages and disadvantages for reconstructing income profiles and calculating income inequality. This is followed by analysis of a dataset derived from the Cadastre that consists of more than 4,000 observations from Palencia (a province in northern Spain) and contains information on sources of household income, each household head's main occupation, residence location, and other household characteristics. Demographic data from this census is used to weight observations in the sample and thereby minimize selection bias. Findings show that inequality in eighteenth‐century Spain was probably substantial despite its relative backwardness; that the relationship between inequality and per capita income was not clear‐cut and was probably influenced by measurement of the higher incomes; and that although income inequality was largely driven by uneven land distribution, labour income also contributed to overall inequality—especially in urban centres.     

Wealth inequality in Sweden, 1750–1900†

This article examines the evolution of wealth inequality in Sweden from 1750 to 1900, contributing both to the debate on early modern and modern inequality and to the general debate on the pattern of inequality during industrialization. The pre‐industrial period (1750–1850) is for the first time examined for Sweden at the national level. The study uses a random sample of probate inventories from urban and rural areas across the country, adjusted for age and social class. Estimates are provided for the years 1750, 1800, 1850, and 1900. The results show a gradual growth in inequality as early as the mid‐eighteenth century, with the sharpest rise in the late nineteenth century. Whereas the early growth in inequality was connected to changes in the countryside and in agriculture, the later growth was related to industrialization encompassing both compositional effects and strong wealth accumulation among the richest. The level of inequality in Sweden in 1750 was lower than for other western European countries, but by 1900 Sweden was just as unequal.     

Growth and inequality in the great and little divergence debate: a Japanese perspective

This article addresses the question of growth and inequality in the great and little divergence trajectories on both sides of Eurasia. A social table constructed for Tokugawa Japan in the 1840s is compared with two cases with high levels of inequality, Stuart England and Mughal India, and the subsequent changes in the three countries are traced to the modern era of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Japanese pattern in the early modern period can be characterized by comparatively modest growth with a relatively egalitarian distribution of income between the social classes, but the pattern changed during the subsequent half‐century to one with an increased tempo of growth and a substantial rise in the level of income inequality. The implications of this finding are discussed in terms of the concept of Smithian growth and are placed in the comparative context of the divergence debate.     

Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England

Estimates of wool production based on the exports of wool and cloth, and an assumption that domestic cloth consumption was, optimistically, constant, suggest that wool production fell by almost a third from the early fourteenth to the mid‐fifteenth century, and had not fully recovered even by the mid‐sixteenth century. However, after the Black Death, much of England's arable was converted to pasture, mainly for sheep, and this process accelerated after 1470. These two observations are contradictory. This article provides new numbers of adult sheep based on estimates of domestic cloth consumption, cloth exports, the changing weight of cloth, and fleece yields. The conclusion is that the adult sheep population only declined by around 13 per cent from 1310 to 1440, and had risen dramatically by the mid‐sixteenth century.     

The evolution of markets in early modern Europe, 1350–1800: a study of wheat prices1

Using a compilation of monthly and annual wheat price data, this article examines the trend of market development in Europe from the late medieval period to the industrial revolution. In contrast to much of the earlier scholarship, which suggests that markets improved, the findings propose that markets were on average as well integrated in Europe in the early sixteenth century as in the late eighteenth century. In the intervening period, markets are found to have suffered a severe contraction. These findings enable us to build a more complete picture of markets in history, and to carry out a better examination of the relationship between markets and economic growth.     

Inequality and infant and childhood mortality in the United States in the twentieth century

This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in the 1920s, results from a number of surveys, and the Linked Birth & Infant Death Files from the National Center for Health Statistics for 1991, infant and child mortality can be related to such other variables as occupation of father or mother, education of father or mother, family income, race, ethnicity, and residence. The evidence shows that, although there have been large absolute reductions in the level of infant and child mortality rates and also a reduction in the absolute levels of differences across socioeconomic groups, relative inequality has not diminished over the 20th century.     

What happened to regional inequality in Britain in the twentieth century?

New estimates of regional GDP for Great Britain in the twentieth century differ from those of Crafts but confirm his hypothesis of a U‐shaped regional inequality curve between 1911 and 2001. Comparison of these estimates with revised estimates for 1861–1911 suggests that the decline in inequality in the first half of the twentieth century forms part of a trend of declining regional inequality and catch‐up of the poorer regions with the richest (the South East) dating back to the 1860s at least. This convergence trend was interrupted by the First World War and the subsequent difficulties of Outer Britain in the 1920s when the gap between the South East and the rest widened. However, sometime after 1931 it picked up again. Since 1971 inequality has worsened and catch‐up has stopped; indeed, there has been divergence of the South East from the rest. This divergence has been especially marked since 1991. Although growth for all regions was faster during the period of increasing regional inequality that encompasses the second half of the twentieth century, the golden age of economic growth for regions outside the South East occurred during the long boom following the Second World War.     

Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments1

Over the past decade ‘material culture’ has become a sub‐discipline of Italian Renaissance studies. This literature, however, has focused on the rich and their objects preserved in museums or reflected in paintings. In addition, the period 1300 to 1600 has been treated without attention to changes in the relationship between people and possessions. The article turns to last wills and testaments, which survive in great numbers and sink deep roots through late medieval and Renaissance cities and their hinterlands. They reveal aspirations and anxieties about things from post‐mortem repairs to farm houses to pillows of monk's wool. These aspirations changed fundamentally after the Black Death. Earlier, during the ‘commercial revolution’, ordinary merchants, artisans, and peasants on their deathbeds practised what the mendicants preached: stripping themselves of their possessions, they converted their estates to coin to be scattered among pious and non‐pious beneficiaries. After the Black Death, testators began to reverse tack, devising ever more complex legal strategies to govern the future flow of their goods. This work of the dead had larger economic consequences. By encouraging the liquidation of estates, the earlier mendicant ideology quickened the velocity of exchange, while the early Renaissance attachment to things did the opposite.     

The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a ‘light touch’ of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories—including the countryside. The previous conception of a ‘light touch’ of plague in the Low Countries was created by the overprivileging of particular urban sources, and a failure to account for the rapid replenishment of cities via inward migration, which obscured demographic decimation. We suggest that the population of the Low Countries may not have recovered faster than other parts of western Europe but instead experienced a greater degree of post‐plague rural–urban migration.     

经济全球化是否扩大收入的不平等

本文回顾了在经济全球化背景下,19世纪初到20世纪末全球收入不平等的演变,分析了发达国家和发展中国家国内收入不平等以及国家间收入不平等的状况,认为经济全球化并非是全球收入不平等扩大的原因。     

Long‐term trends in economic inequality: lessons from colonial Botswana, 1921–74

This article contributes to the growing literature on colonial legacies influencing long‐term development. It focuses on Botswana, a case where the post‐independence diamond‐led economy has been considered an economic success story, despite its high levels of inequality. Here it is argued that this pathway of rapid resource‐driven growth combined with increasing socio‐economic inequality had already started during the time of the colonial cattle economy, and that this older case is equally relevant for understanding long‐term growth‐inequality trends in Botswana and other natural‐resource‐dependent economies. Six social tables, covering the period 1921 to 1974, are constructed using colonial archives, government statistics, and anthropological records. Based on the social tables, income inequality is estimated in the colonial and early post‐independence eras, capturing both the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The article demonstrates how the creation of a cattle export sector in the 1930s brought new opportunities to access export incomes, and how this led to a polarization in cattle holdings and increasing income inequalities. Further, with the expansion of colonial administration, government wages forged ahead, increasing income inequality and causing a growing income divide between public and private formal employment.     

New evidence and new methods to measure human capital inequality before and during the industrial revolution: France and the US in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries

We explore pre‐ and early industrial inequality of numeracy using the age heaping method and anthropometric strategies. For France, we map differential numeracy between the upper and lower segments of a sample population for 26 regions during the seventeenth century. For the US, inequality of numeracy is estimated for 25 states during the 19th century. Testing the hypothesis of a negative impact of inequality on welfare growth, we find evidence that lower inequality increased industrial development in the US, whereas for France such an effect was only evident in interactions with political variables such as proximity to central government.     

Marital fertility and wealth during the fertility transition: rural France, 1750–1850

It has been long established that the demographic transition began in eighteenth‐century France, yet there is no consensus on exactly why fertility declined. This analysis links fertility life histories to wealth at death data for four rural villages in France, 1750–1850. For the first time, the wealth–fertility relationship during the onset of the French fertility decline can be analysed. Where fertility is declining, wealth is a powerful predictor of smaller family size. This article argues that fertility decline in France was a result of changing levels of economic inequality, associated with the 1789 Revolution. In cross‐section, the data support this hypothesis: where fertility is declining, economic inequality is lower than where fertility is high.     

China’s evolving inequality

China’s inequality is evolving. This paper brings the story up to date, drawing on recent research, much of it by the author. It begins with a brief account of rising inequality, and its causes, over the period of economic reform. It then examines the fall in the inequality of income in recent years and the reasons for this reversal of trend. Inequality of wealth, by contrast, has risen over the twenty-first century: its dimensions, components and causes are analysed. The final substantive section considers the evaluation of inequality in more depth and detail than is conventional, and provides pointers as to how value judgements about inequality might be made.     

Land distribution and inequality in a black settler colony: the case of Sierra Leone, 1792–1831†

Land distribution is considered to be one of the main contributors to inequality in pre‐industrial societies. This article contributes to the debate on the origins of economic inequality in pre‐industrial African societies by studying land inequality at a particularly early stage of African economic history. The research examines land distribution and inequality in land ownership among settlers in the Colony of Sierra Leone for three benchmark years over the first 40 years of its existence. The findings show that land inequality was low at the founding of the Colony but increased substantially over time. We suggest that this increase was enabled by a shift in the type of egalitarianism pursued by the colonial authorities, which was reflected in a change in the redistributive policy applied, which allowed later settlers to appropriate land more freely than had been previously possible.     

Between Malthus and the industrial take-off: regional inequality in Sweden, 1571–1850

The causes and extent of regional inequality in the process of economic growth are at the core of historical economic research. So far, much attention has been devoted to studying the role of industrialization in driving regional divergence. However, empirical studies on relatively unequal countries such as Italy and Spain show that inequality was already high at the outset of modern industrialization. Using new estimates of Swedish regional GDP, this article looks for the first time at regional inequality in a pre-industrial European economy. Its findings show that inequality increased dramatically between 1571 and 1750 and stayed high until the mid-nineteenth century. This result refutes the classical view that the industrial take-off was the main driver of regional divergence. Decomposing the Theil index for GDP per worker, we find that the bulk of inequality from 1750 onwards was driven by structural differences across sectors rather than different regional productivity within sectors. We show that counties with higher agricultural productivity followed a classic Malthusian pattern when experiencing technological advancement, while those with higher industrial productivity did not. We suggest that institutional factors, such as the creation of the Swedish Empire, Stockholm's trading rights, and a protective industrial policy, amplified this exceptional pattern.     

MEASURING INEQUALITY TRENDS IN COLONIAL AUSTRALIA USING FACTOR–PRICE RATIOS: THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES

Previous research on nineteenth century globalisation argues that during the second half of that century wage–rental ratios in labour scarce, land-abundant new world economies decreased. This suggests inequality rose in the new world. Australia has been cited as a conspicuous example of this trend. The paper re-examines this argument using disaggregated land and wage data for four Australian colonies. We reveal large regional differences in both factor–price levels and trends – something that has been overlooked when discussing Australian colonial inequality and we suggest that regional disparities in other nineteenth century economies are also likely to be important.     

Unions and the Great Compression of wage inequality in the US at mid‐century: evidence from local labour markets

This article tests whether places with higher exposure to unionization during the 1940s, due to their pre‐existing industrial composition, tended to have larger declines in wage inequality, conditional on local economic and demographic observables and regional trends. We find a strong negative correlation between exposure to unionization and changes in local inequality from 1940–50 and 1940–60. This does not appear to be underpinned by skill‐specific sorting of workers or by firms leaving places with high exposure to unionization. We also find that the correlation between exposure to unionization in the 1940s and the change in inequality after 1940 persists in long‐difference regressions to the end of the twentieth century.