Oatcakes and Living Standards

Source: Jan de Vries lecture, 2/13/2008

• Male laborer wage divided by the cost of 2000 cheap calories

  • rice in China
  • polenta in Milan
  • rye bread in Leipzig
  • oats in Amsterdam and London.

• In 1740 laborers in Leipzig, Beijing, Suzhou, and Milan could barely keep body and soul together

  • if their work was not too strenuous
  • if they did not have too many non-working dependents
  • then they could afford to buy basic calories--and not much more

• By contrast, laborers in London and Amsterdam are different

  • appear to be living the life of Riley
  • only a quarter of their wages needed for basic calories
  • but this is if people in London ate oats
  • and oats were for Scotsmen--and horses: Englishmen ate wheat bread; calories from wheat-based bread were two to three times the cost of calories from oats.

• So were workers in London in 1740 miserably poor, spending most if not all on their income on bare caloric maintenance in the grain typical of their time and place?

• Or were the workers of London relatively rich--and deciding to spend their wealth on the superior taste and mouth feel of yeasty wheat bread
  • and on the associated symbolic declaration that they were proud and free Englishmen
  • not benighted barbarous Scots (or horses)?

Comments

[Lawrence Krubner]

Is there really reliable data on wages and food prices in London, Amsterdam, Milan, Leipzig, Beijing and Shanghai in 1740?

[Yes.]

Was there really enough world trade to establish a meaningful comparison of wages?

[Yes.]

Were the markets in currency rational and transparent enough that we can feel confident of these comparisons?

[Yes]

Surely there is a factor for error here, a percentage by which these estimates might be wrong by?

[Perhaps 25%, at most.]

If so, it would be good to know what the margin for error is.