Cormac Ó Gráda

Fertility trends, excess mortality, and the Great Irish Famine

This paper has developed estimates of the age-specific mortality rates prevailing during the Great Irish Famine and has analyzed fertility trends during the 25 years before the Famine. Our calculations confirm that 1 million Irish people perished as a result of this disaster. This figure does not include the deaths among the 1.3 million emigrants who left Ireland during the Famine period. The Famine produced a significant drop in the fertility rate, and we estimate that more than 300,000 births did not take place as a result of the Famine. The effects were especially severe on the very young and the very old, a result echoed in the findings of demographic analyses of other famines. Our procedure permits a reconstruction of the Irish population by age and sex during the period 1821-1841. In addition, it yields year-by-year estimates of the birth rate over this period. We estimate that the rate fell by about 14 percent, a result robust to our assumptions regarding emigration. Economic historians have debated this issue, and we hope that our evidence, although preliminary, will be of assistance. Our analysis also permits year-by-year reconstruction of Irish population totals for the period 1821-1851. Two years are of particular interest. Virtually all recent writers, with the notable exception of Lee (1981), have suggested that the 1831 census returns overestimated the actual population resident in Ireland at that date. Our reconstruction supports the validity of the 1831 census figure. We obtain a total of 7,847,000, which is in good agreement with the disputed census figure of 7,767,000. But perhaps the most interesting figure is the population total for the end of 1845, the highest ever achieved in Ireland. We estimate that the population on the eve of the Great Famine was 8,525,000. Throughout the paper we have tried to highlight those areas in which the data are unreliable, unavailable, or distorted. We have tried to devise cross-checks for consistency and to test the sensitivity of the results to a range of assumptions. A case in point concerns the age-sex profile and volume of emigration to England, Scotland, and Wales. Additional work at the micro level would be helpful here. More solid evidence on Famine births would also be helpful. The parish registers we have sampled certainly provide a clue to trends, but we have only made a start in that respect. A much more comprehensive survey is needed to convey the national picture.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Migration as disaster relief : lessons from the Great Irish Famine

Mass emigration was one key feature of the Great Irish Famine which distinguishes it from today’s famines. By bringing famine victims to overseas food supplies, it undoubtedly saved many lives. Poverty traps prevented those most in need from availing of this form of relief, however. Cross-county data show that the ratio of emigration to deaths was higher in richer than in poorer counties. Another key feature of the Famine emigration was that it was irreversible. The Famine thus had a permanent impact on Ireland’s population and economy, whereas typically famines only reduce population in a transitory fashion. Famine emigration spurred post-Famine emigration by eliminating poverty traps; the result was a sustained decline in the Irish population, and a convergence of living standards both within Ireland and between Ireland and the rest of the world.

What do people die of during famines : the Great Irish Famine in comparative perspective

The Irish Famine killed over a million people who would not have died otherwise. The nosologies published by the 1851 Irish census provide a rich source for the causes of death during these catastrophic years. This source is extremely rich and detailed, but also inaccurate and deficient to the point where many scholars have given up using it. In this article we try to make adjustments to the death-by-cause tabulations and provide more accurate ones. These tables are then used to analyse the reasons why so many people died and why modern famines tend to be less costly in terms of human life.

Living Standards and Mortality Since the Middle Ages

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.

Fertility and Population in Ireland, North and South

This paper reviews and interprets recent demographic trends and prospects in the two Irelands, North and South. We discuss both the influence of religion on demographic behaviour, and the impact of demographic trends on the distribution by religion. In the Republic of Ireland, we show that the long-standing gap in marital fertility between Catholics and others had virtually disappeared by the 1980s. In Northern Ireland the gap is still there in the 1990s, though considerably reduced. However, estimates of its size hinge on how the significant proportion of non-respondents to the census question on religion are allocated. We identify some peculiarities of the non-respondent population which imply that it was more ‘Catholic’ in 1991 than first reports suggested. The Catholic share of Northern Irelands population may accordingly be larger – 42 to 43 per cent – than previously thought. In both communities, the future of the Catholic share depends less on fertility than on migration patterns.

Harvest Shortfalls, Grain Prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England

The frequency of bad harvests and price elasticity of demand are measured using new data on English grain yields 1268–1480 and 1750–1850 and a revised price series. The analysis shows that major harvest shortfalls were a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although serious harvest shortfalls long remained an unavoidable fact of economic life, by c.1800 yields had become less variable and prices less harvest sensitive. By the eve of the Industrial Revolution, England had become effectively famine-free.

The ripple that drowns? Twentieth‐century famines in China and India as economic history

The twentieth century saw the virtual elimination of famine across most of the globe, but also witnessed some of the worst famines ever recorded. The causes usually given for these twentieth-century famines differ from those given for earlier famines, which tend to be more often blamed on harvest failures per se than on human agency. This paper reassesses two of the last centurys most notorious famines, the Chinese Great Leap Famine of 1959-61 and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-4, in the light of these rival perspectives.

New evidence on the fertility transition in Ireland 1880–1911

Recent analyses of Ireland’s marital fertility transition based on the Princeton Ig and the Stanford CPA measures are reassessed. Revised county estimates of Ig are subjected to regression analysis, and added insight into CPA is offered by comparing Ireland with Scotland and applying the measure to three specially constructed local data sets.

The Poor Law of Old England: Institutional Innovation and Demographic Regimes

The striking improvement in life expectancy that took place in England between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century cannot be explained either by an increase in real wages or by better climatic conditions. The decrease in the risk of utter destitution or of death from famine that was evident on the eve of the Industrial Revolution stemmed, in part, from institutional changes in the old poor law, which began to take shape and become effective early in the seventeenth century.

Famine and Market in Ancien Régime France

How—and how well—do food markets function in famine conditions? The controversy surrounding this question may benefit from historical perspective. Here we study two massive famines that struck France between 1693 and 1710, killing over two million people. In both cases the impact of harvest failure was exacerbated by wartime demands on the food supply; we ask whether the crises were exacerbated yet further by a failure of markets to function as they did in normal times. The evidence, we conclude, is most consistent with the view that markets in fact helped alleviate these crises, albeit modestly.