Migration in the world economy of 1870–1914

The period form 1870 to the First World War was a period in which the international movement of people was less restricted than in any other period of modern times. Large income differential led to large and sustained rates of migration from resource-poor to resource-rich countries. High rates of natural population growth and a respective increase in population-related costs enforced this migration to an extent never seen before or thereafter. In addition, migration was strengthened by large decreases in transportation costs. During the first four decades of this period, transportation costs decreased to one sixth, but then rose substantially in the course of World War I.     

External influences in Nordic business cycles, 1870–1988

This paper considers the relationship of the Nordic business cycle to the world business cycle using annual output data spanning 1870–1988. The paper studies the Nordic and a set of non-Nordic countries separately and finds evidence for both a Nordic and a world business cycle. Output movements in the individual Nordic countries are connected through the Nordic business cycle and are less affected by the world business cycle. There is no significant change in the behavior of the business cycle in the Nordic countries between 1873–1913 and 1948–1988.     

Identifying the poor in the 1870s and 1880s1

Poverty lines devised throughout England and Wales in the 1870s and 1880s defined ‘the poor’, a new class not recognized by the poor law. This article provides an account of the poverty lines adopted, mainly by school boards, in about 40 different places; the context in which they were developed; and what has been retrieved of the reasons determining the adoption of specific poverty lines. In particular, it examines the principal controversies surrounding them, and the challenge they posed to the poor law; and, incidentally, compares them to the poverty lines proposed, many years later, by Booth and Rowntree.