 Was Malthus right? The relationship between population and real wages in Italian history, 1320 to 1870Explorations in Economic History, 2010, vol. 47, issue 4, 460-475 Abstract: In this article we investigate the relation between population and real wages in the Italian economy during the period 1320-1870. The main result is that the positive check is strong and statistically significant but the other equilibrating mechanism in the Malthusian model - the preventive check - based on the positive relationship between fertility and real wages does not operate in pre-industrial Italy. In contrast to the Malthusian hypothesis, we find a negative feedback from wage to population. The empirical result is clearly consistent with the theoretical framework of the "old age security motive". We show, with a simple overlapping-generation model, that by allowing for substitution in a pre-industrial economy between child quantity and other assets (such as new seeds, better soybean quality, and new cultivation and irrigation methods) fertility may be negatively affected whenever income rises. Keywords: Malthusian; hypotheses; Pre-industrial; labor; productivity; and; wages; Population; trend; Demographic; changes (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:exehis:v:47:y:2010:i:4:p:460-475 Access Statistics for this article Explorations in Economic History is currently edited by R.H. Steckel More articles in Explorations in Economic History from Elsevier |
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