Population Dynamics in England

  1. What happened to population of England (and the UK)
  2. What were the immediate causes (e.g. mortality and fertility changes) of population changes
  3. What were the social and economics causes of these proximate causes?

Population of England

See many graphs and tables in , , . Summary: pop declined late 17th century then began sustained rise that accelerated peaking in approx 1825.

What were the immediate causes (e.g. mortality and fertility changes) of population changes

  1. Two main determinants are e = expectation of life at birth and GRR = gross reproduction rate (the number of female children an average woman born at that point would expect to have in her lifetime). Population growth rate = e + grr
  2. Plot of GRR and e. See clearly that major change in 18th century was increase in GRR from 1.9 (approx) in 1681 to a peak of just over 3 in 1820. e does increase but not nearly as dramatically (from 30 to 42). So fertility changes are what is important.
  3. So what drives fertility changes. Is it:
    1. Changes in nuptiality i.e. in marriage either a) age of marriage YES b) proportion who get married NO See excellent figure 4.5 in which shows no change in proportion ever married at 40-44 between 1716 and 1816 and all change in mean age of marriage (from 26.5 to 225).
    2. fertility within marriage. NO Spacing of births within marriage doesn't change (family reconstitution studies)
    3. other fertility changes e.g. outside of marriage. MINIMAL Insignificant compared to change in marriage. Particularly since illegitimacy was low in 1700 but high in 1800: 'At the start of the long eighteenth century fewer than a tenth of all first births were illegitimate; before its end the proportion had risen to a quarter, and a further quarter of all first births were pre-nuptially conceived. So when nuptiality was low, and legitimate fertility was heavily constrained, the efficiency of the check on growth which it represented was not undermined by a large transfer of fertility from within marriage to outside it.'

What were the social and economics causes of these proximate causes?

The Basics

We have already established (above) that the main causes of population change was changes in age of nuptiality. The question is what social and economic factors lay behind this.

  1. Growing population was associating with increasing prices (and falling real wages) in fairly regular fashion until massive structural break in 1800. See figures (handout, and ref: Figure 3 and 4).

Wrigley

How was this associated with nuptiality? See figure 5 ref: (also in ref: and in handout). This shows strong association between real wage trends and nuptiality with nuptiality lower when real wage is lower (through both increased age of marriage and number never marrying). Note:
  1. very distinctive lag - particularly after 1820 - of crude first marriage rate from real wage rate (this is abolished in wrigley_2004 - apparently). Wrigley estimate this (going all the way back to 1620s) as roughly 40 year lag.
  2. Real wage index (phelps-brown) is a bit dubious data-wise (at times wage index is based on only one town).
It is not clear that, ... we should look to changes in nuptiality as the principal immediate reason for the acceleration that occurred [in popln growth]. It is highly probable that this did not reflect any major alteration in the way in which young people made their decisions to marry, to delay marriage or to remain single, but that instead the inducements to marry grew steadily greater and eh disincentives less with rising real incomes over a period which lasted more than a century.
ref: See also n.47 (next page) for interesting comments on attitudes to children(wage earners or welcomed for their own sake? Some evidence that by 18th century inclined towards the latter).

The Goldstone view

  1. Accepts basic outline of w-s story
  2. Real-wage/GRR Lag isn't 40 years. Corrected (using lots of other people's estimates) its about 15-20 years
  3. Before 1700 it is changes in proportion ever married that is driving changes in nuptiality and hence fertility
  4. After 1700 (and particularly after 1750) age of marriage starts to change rapidly and this then accounts for bulk of change in GRR
  5. Our chief finding is that a true demographic revolution occurred during the eighteenth century, involving changes in the relations between real wages, nuptiality and fertility. Before 1750, England maintained a 'preventive check' homeostasis through a high and stable age at first marriage, and marriage incidence that responded to real wages. After that date, homeostasis broke down. The crucial factor was a sharp drop in the age of first marriage, probably tied to emerging industrialization.
    The Industrial Revolution appears to have played a critical role, not because it created proletarians, but because it provided employment opportunities for a labour force, in both agriculture and manufacture, that was already becoming proletarianized as a result of population growth and changes in agriculture.
    ref:
  6. ... for those who could find work, the conditions of employment were altered. Instead of casual labour in field or cottage, the industrial proletariat and their agricultural counterparts who worked nearby to feed them were provided witha regular work at a stable wage. These were the crucial conditions for early family formation.
    The increase in fertility after 1750 does not appear linked a a broad change in living standards or nuptiality. The fall in age at marriage did not result from a general shift of the age distribution of marriages towards younger ages, but from a sudden concentration of first marriages at very young ages by a limited fraction, roughly 20 per cent, of the marrying population. The rise in fertility was thus the product of marked changes for a portion of the population rather than a general phenomenon. Income per head may have grown only slowly with industrialization, but for some the conditions of family formation changed rapidly.

Bibliography

See biblio.xml