1381 and the Malthus Delusion

Gregory Clark

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: What were income trends before the Industrial Revolution? Clark (2007b) argued on both theoretical and empirical grounds that pre-industrial income was fluctuating but trendless, a position Gunner Persson has labeled “the Malthus Delusion.” Steve Broadberry and Bruce Campbell, in support of the Persson position, have recently estimated that English per capita income grew more than three-fold between 1270 and 1800. Here I use the Poll Tax returns to estimate income in 1379-81 from the farming share of employment. England in 1381, with only 55 percent of the population engaged in farming, was at income levels close to those of 1817.

Keywords: Long; Run; Growth; England (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N1 N3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/25466/1/MPRA_paper_25466.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: 1381 and the Malthus delusion (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:25466

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().