Histoire & Mesure, 1993, VIII-1/2, 93-115

Tommy BENGTSSON

A Re-Interpretation of Population Trends and Cycles in England, France and Sweden,

1751 - 1860 (*)

Introduction

This essay discusses how the relationship between short-term cycles in the economy and the population, in particular in mortality, is influenced by the average level of standard of living, income distribution, market integration and level of mortality. Thus, the essay should primarily be regarded as an attempt to integrate two perspectives in historical demography, namely the analysis of trends and the analysis of short-term changes. In addition, effects of the choice of aggregation level and the measures of mortality and economic variables are also discussed. The analysis is confined to the conditions in 18th and 19th century England, France and Sweden.

In the study, we argue that the response of mortality to short-term variations in income should be high if the standard of living is low, if the distribution of income is uneven and if the extent of market integration is low. In these cases, it is a question of causal relationships. We will also argue that the mortality response to short-term variations in income could, ceteris paribus, be expected to be low in a society with high mortality. However, with respect to the impact of the level of mortality we are not dealing with causal relationships.

In addition, the short-term relationship between the economy and the population may be influenced by a number of other factors, such as how large a population the analysis refers to and how the demographic (crude or age-specific rates) and economic variables (prices or income) are measured.

After having developed the discussion of these issues, the relationships between economic fluctuations and variations in mortality, nuptia- lity and fertility in England, France and Sweden for the periods 1750-1799 and 1800-1860 will be analysed. There are significant differences in mortality levels and possibly also in standard of living between the countries and the time periods. We then raise the question of the impacts of these levels on the response of mortality and the relationship between other demographic variables and economic fluctuations.

Relating the demographic response to short-term changes in real wage levels is by no means an unusual approach. The models used in this paper, i.e. distributed lag models, are very similar to the ones used by Ronald Lee in his analysis of short-term changes in England and by Wrigley and Schofield in their book on the reconstruction of the

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