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Title: Living Standards and Mortality since the Middle Ages

Author(s): Morgan Kelly and Cormac � Gr�da

Publication Date: October 2010

Keyword(s): positive check

Programme Area(s): International Macroeconomics

Abstract: Existing studies find little connection between living standards and mortality in England, but go back only to the sixteenth century. Using new data on inheritances, we extend estimates of mortality back to the mid-thirteenth century and find, by contrast, that deaths from unfree tenants to the nobility were strongly affected by harvests. Looking at a large sample of parishes after 1540, we find that the positive check had weakened considerably by 1650 even though real wages were falling, but persisted in London for another century despite its higher wages. In both cases the disappearance of the positive check coincided with the introduction of systematic poor relief, suggesting that government action played a role in breaking the link between harvest failure and mass mortality.

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Bibliographic Reference

Kelly, M and � Gr�da, C. 2010. 'Living Standards and Mortality since the Middle Ages'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=8036