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Real Incomes in the Late Middle Ages: A Test of the Common Case for Diminishing Returns*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
By now it is received doctrine of long standing that the economies of northwestern Europe were repeatedly held in check by diminishing returns in the Middle Ages. Much of this argument has been focused on the course of economic affairs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This period is commonly pictured as the most dramatic example of the normal tendency for population growth to place increasingly severe pressure on the resource base. The evidence most frequently offered to support this thesis for the fourteenth century is the substantial decline in population to which the Black Death is believed to be a dramatic, but by no means exclusive, contributor. This is not to say that it has been generally believed that no growth occurred in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, many proponents of this view stress that there were lengthy subperiods within the era in which both per capita income and population increased. It is held that ultimately such gains were reversed and pushed back to the level of subsistence, however. The dominant force is seen to be diminishing returns à la Malthus in that population always continued to increase until eventually—intermittent growth notwithstanding—it spread the available nonhuman resources so thinly across the population that further increase in its size was impossible. Probably the best known spokesman for this thesis is Professor M. M. Postan. He has spent a good part of his distinguished career constructing the conceptual model and assembling the historical evidence to substantiate the hypothesis. The essentials of his position are supported by the other widely recognized commentators on the question-Georges Duby, N. J. G. Pounds, Sylvia L. Thrupp, J. Z. Titow, and B. H. Slicher Van Bath. Recently the view has been given a modern, formal specification in the works of Douglass C. North and Robert P. Thomas and that of Ronald Lee. In recent years some of the components of this explanation have been challenged by scholars such as Barbara Harvey, John Hatcher, Mavis Mate, N. J. Mayhew, and D. G. Watts. The traditional view seems to have survived such doubts, however, as is apparent in the tendency of scholars to continue to couch their investigations of economic affairs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in that framework. The issue is certainly important enough, however, that a comprehensive reexamination of it is warranted.
- Type
- Comment and Debate
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Social Science History Association 1977
Footnotes
*
With thanks for assistance to Paul David, Michael Edelstein, Stanley Engerman, Robert Gallman, Barbara Harvey, Donald McCloskey, Lloyd Mercer, Joel Mokyr, Douglass North, Joseph Reid, Jr., Richard Rapp, and the members of the economic history workshop at the University of Pennsylvania and the 1975 Cliometrics Conference at Madison, Wisconsin.
References
Notes
1 Postan, M. M., The Medieval Economy and Society, (Berkeley, 1972)Google Scholar. See also his “England” in Chapter VII, “Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime” in Postan, M. M., ed., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. I (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar. Duby, Georges, Rural Economy and Country Life in the West (Columbia, South Carolina, 1968)Google Scholar. Pounds, N. J. G., An Historical Geography of Europe 450 BC-1330 AD (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thrupp, Sylvia L., “Comparative Study in the Barnyard,” The Journal of Economic History, 35:1 (March 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Titow, J. Z., English Rural Society, 1200-1350 (New York, 1969)Google Scholar. Bath, B. H. Slicher Van, The Agrarian History of Western Europe (London, 1963)Google Scholar. North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert P., The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lee, Ronald, “Population in Preindustrial England: An Econometric Analysis,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87 (November 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Barbara F. Harvey, “The Population Trend in England between 1300 and 1348,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1966. Hatcher, John, “A Diversified Economy: Later Medieval Cornwall,” Economic History Review, 22:2 (August 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mate, Mavis, “High Prices in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Causes and Consequences,” Economic History Review, 28:1 (February 1975)Google Scholar. Mayhew, N. J., “Numismatic Evidence and Falling Prices in the Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 27:1 (February 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Watts, D. G., “A Model for the Early Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 20:3 (December 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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3 Many observers would likely argue that such forces are operating in the modern economy as well, but would be much more likely to be counteracted by such influences as improving technology. Such offsetting forces are generally dismissed as unimportant in pre-modern times, hence the inevitable return to subsistence in periods such as that of the Middle Ages.
4 Most would agree that subsistence is that level of real income which just allows an individual to survive. The problem, however, is turning that abstract concept into an operational measure. For example, over how long a period is survival necessary? Individuals can undergo long periods of malnutrition and weight loss and still live. (On a short-term basis, a good portion of Americans fall below subsistence some time in their lives in their efforts to lose weight.) At what point does the stunted growth of children and early death of adults drop below subsistence? Then there is the problem of equating the consumption bundles of different economies which differ in relative prices. Perhaps the most extreme example of this problem of equating minimum levels is that of the bushmen of Australia and Africa. They live—as they have for thousands of years—on a diet of berries, grubs, roots and small animals which are noneconomic goods in all developed societies. Thus by other prices they subsist on zero income. One possible conclusion from all this ambiguity is that the concept represents a continuum rather than a discrete break. That, however, is also to say that no given value can be taken as subsistence; in which case, the concept loses much of its usefulness.
5 The behavior responsible for this expected pattern of price adjustment is so basic that it should appear whether income was distributed equally or not. Income normally spent on “unessentials” (in excess of the amount regularly so spent) would be diverted to purchase food. If all incomes were equal this would occur proportionately across the population. If, in the case of an unequal income distribution, some were at or near subsistence while others were substantially above it, the latter would divert some of their “nonessential” income to food, thereby increasing the price of that commodity above what the shortfall in current output would otherwise indicate.
The existence of a noncommercialized sector in the economy should not bias the results of this procedure unless the reduction in food output leads to a change in the proportion of total output which is exchanged in the commercialized sector. An increase in money transactions relative to total output, for example, would reduce the increase in food prices below what it would otherwise be and thus understate the indicated amount of income above subsistence. Consequently, the potential bias depends on whether individuals in aggregate expand or contract their participation in food markets during a famine
6 Titow, J. Z., Winchester Yields (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar. The 43 percent estimate was provided by Donald N. McClosky, University of Chicago.
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9 Titow, Winchester Yields.
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14 B. F. Harvey, “Population Trend in England.”
15 Titow, English Rural Society, 74-78.
16 This argument is supported by Titow’s findings on land yields. If yields per acre are falling this implies (other things equal) that the marginal product of land and hence the price of the resource must be decreasing.
17 D. L. Farmer, “Livestock Price Movements.
18 Mayhew, “Numismatic Evidence and Falling Prices.”
19 Mate, “High Prices in Early Fourteenth-Century England,” 4.
20 Watts, “A Model for the Early Fourteenth Century.”
21 Postan, M., “Some Evidence of Declining Population in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review, 2:3 (1950) 231Google Scholar. See also Pounds, N. J. G., An Economic History of Europe (Longman, 1974) 231.Google Scholar
22 Postan, Medieval Economy, 22.
23 Beveridge, “Westminster Wages.” Postan, M. M. and Titow, J., “Heriots and Prices on Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review, Second Series, 11:3 (1959), 410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 At that time threshing and winnowing were labor-intensive tasks which could be postponed without undue costs, so they were generally carried out in the winter when the pace of agricultural activity slowed down. Laborers were likely to be employed on a more regular, year-round basis although, of course, the demand for their services tended to slacken somewhat in the winter also. At any given time, however, some ratio between the average daily payments to the two groups will be established so that what matters in using laborers’! rates as a surrogate for daily threshing and winnowing payments is whether they change relative to each other. Thus forces which increase (or decrease) the return on labor in the winter months relative to summer employment would tend to understate (or overstate) labor productivity by this measure. One well publicized development in this period which tended to increase winter renumeration—and thereby understate this measure of labor productivity—was the growth of wool textile production in the countryside.
25 Parain, Charles, “The Evolution of Agricultural Economic Technique,” in Postan, M. M., ed., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, second ed., vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1966), 164-67.Google Scholar