China’s population expansion and its causes during the Qing period, 1644–1911

Kent Deng

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The Qing Period (1644–1911) has been recognised as one of the most important eras in China’s demographic history. However, factors that determined and contributed to the rise in the Qing population have remained unclear. Most works so far have only speculated at what might have caused the population to increase so significantly during the Qing Period. This study uses substantial amounts of quantitative evidence to investigate the impact of changes in China’s resource base (farmland), farming technology (rice yield level and spread of maize-farming), social welfare (disaster relief), peasant wealth (rice prices), cost of living (silver’s purchasing power), as well as exogenous shocks (wars and natural disasters) on the Qing population.

Keywords: economic growth; demography; household incomes; market prices; tax burden; proto-welfare; sectoral differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 J1 N5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-his and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:64492

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