The Occupational Structure of England and Wales before during and after the escape from Malthusian constraints

This paper has a number of aims. First, to set out the ways in which the economy of England and Wales between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries was and was not subject to Malthusian constraints. This will entail setting out some the key arguments advanced by Malthus as well as a historiographical synthesis of the escape from Malthusian constraints in a sequence of seven stages between the mid fourteenth and mid nineteenth centuries. The second aim is, to extend Malthus’ model, where it is clearly defective – on the impossibility of ever raising the living standards of the whole population - by borrowing from Arthur Lewis, the idea of a two phase model of economic development, one characterised by ‘unlimited’ supplies of labour and stagnant real wages, separated from a second stage, with limited supplies of labour and rising real wages by a ‘tipping point.’ Third, to argue that what is remarkable about the economic and social history of the period 1750-1850 is not the usual litany of misery, real though that misery was, but that neither the living standards of the poor, nor average living standards nor average life expectancies collapsed in the face of a rapidly growing and urbanising population. Fourth, to argue that technological change between 1550 and 1800, especially in the eighteenth century, was critical in preventing living standards from collapsing. Fifth, to take issue with some aspects of the now dominant perception of the classic Industrial Revolution period 1760-1830 as essentially lacking in rapid and dramatic change. Sixth, having cleared the ground, historiographically and conceptually, to present a brief summary of the key findings to date, of an ongoing project aimed at providing as full and detailed a quantitative reconstruction of the occupational structure of England and Wales as the surviving sources will permit between 1381 and 1911 and to make some brief remarks about how this relates to the staged escape from Malthusian constraints.