Greg Clark (2007), "Living Standards: Malawi, 2000 versus the Stone Age"

Greg Clark (2007), "Living Standards:  Malawi, 2000 versus the Stone Age":

To demonstrate how low living standards are in modern sub-Saharan Africa, even relative to the Stone Age I first compare England in 1800 relative to hunter-gatherer societies, then England in 1800 against modern Malawi.  The English in 1800 lived at about the same level as the Stone Age.  Incomes in Malawi in 2000-2 seem to have been 33-40% of those of England in 1800, and hence significantly less than those of the Stone Age.

England, 1800 vs. Stone age:

As the table below shows there is no indication that average living standards in England in 1800 were any better than those of forager societies, which we can take as typical of the Stone Age.

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England in 1800 versus Malawi in 2001-2:

Table 3.2 shows the wages of construction laborers in Malawi in 2001 and 2002, compared to the prices of some major items of consumption, along with to the comparative data for construction laborers in England in 1800.

Only food prices are available for Malawi, but since these were 75 percent of English farm workers’ expenditures they provide a fair approximation of living standards.  The second column shows the day wage in England as well as prices in England.    The fourth column gives the same data for Malawi in 2001-2.  Columns 3 and 5 show how much of each item could be purchased with the day wage in each country.  Thus the day wage in England in 1800 would purchase 3.2 kg. of wheat flour, while the day wage in Malawi would purchase only 2.1 kg. of inferior maize flour. 

English workers of 1800 could purchase much more of most goods than their Malawian counterparts.  The last row shows the cost of the English basket of foods in d. (assuming that all income was spent on food) and the equivalent cost in Malawi (in Kwacha).  If a Malawian tried to purchase the consumption of the English worker in 1800 he could afford only 40 percent as much.  Thus living standards in England in 1800 were 2.5 times greater than those of current day Malawi.... Yet the wage in Malawi is still above the subsistence level for that economy, since the Malawian population continues to grow rapidly.

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For a much wider range of countries we have estimates of real national income per person in 2000.  It is also possible for England to estimate national income per person back to 1200, so we can compare average income per person in pre-industrial England with the range in the modern world.  Table 3.3 shows the results of that comparison.  England in 1200-1800 had as high, or higher, an income per person as large areas of the modern world.  Countries with more than 700 million people in the year 2000 had incomes below the average of pre-industrial England.  Another billion people in India had average incomes only 10 percent above England before the Industrial Revolution.  Some modern countries are dramatically poorer.  Hundreds of millions of African now live on less than 40 percent of the income of pre-industrial England. 

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[1]Hans-Peter Kohler, University of Pennsylvania. [2]Source: Malawi, International Labour Office, Geneva.  October Enquiry data on wages and retail food prices. [3] Income, Penn World Tables.  Population, United Nations.

Comments

[nancy]

We may have eaten better though in the stone age.