Frank Geary

Examining Ireland's Post-Famine Economic Growth Performance

This paper sets out a short-cut method for allocating country level GDP estimates across regions. Comparing UK regional GDP estimates generated using the short-cut method against existing regional GDP figures suggests that it produces acceptable results. We make estimates of GDP for the four countries of the UK for each of the census years between 1861 and 1911. Irish GDP per worker and per caput grew faster than British. These indicators demonstrate weak convergence of the two regions. The bulk of the Irish performance may be explained by traditional forces such as TFP growth and capital accumulation.

What Happened to Regional Inequality in Britain in the Twentieth Century

New estimates of regional GDP for Great Britain in the twentieth century differ from those of Crafts but confirm his hypothesis of a U‐shaped regional inequality curve between 1911 and 2001. Comparison of these estimates with revised estimates for 1861–1911 suggests that the decline in inequality in the first half of the twentieth century forms part of a trend of declining regional inequality and catch‐up of the poorer regions with the richest (the South East) dating back to the 1860s at least. This convergence trend was interrupted by the First World War and the subsequent difficulties of Outer Britain in the 1920s when the gap between the South East and the rest widened. However, sometime after 1931 it picked up again. Since 1971 inequality has worsened and catch‐up has stopped; indeed, there has been divergence of the South East from the rest. This divergence has been especially marked since 1991. Although growth for all regions was faster during the period of increasing regional inequality that encompasses the second half of the twentieth century, the golden age of economic growth for regions outside the South East occurred during the long boom following the Second World War.

Regional industrial structure and labour force decline in Ireland between 1841 and 1851

The censuses of 1841 and 1851 provide the earliest detailed and consistent data on the occupations pursued by the people of Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This paper presents a series, constructed from this data, on occupations classified by industry for the years 1841 and 1851. Its purpose is to establish the industrial distribution of the labour force for each of the four provinces, to describe the changes in industrial employment by province during the famine decade, and to make a contribution to debate on the origins of employment decline. I In its return of occupations, the census of 1841 differed from the censuses of 1821 and 1831 in three ways: in method of estimation, in compilation, and in system of classification. As regards estimation, the 1841 commissioners issued a ‘Form of family return’ to be completed by the head of the family, rather than, as in 1821 and 1831, having the details entered by the enumerator from viva voce inquiry. This has its limitations in that it depends on the accuracy of the householders’ returns, but it is preferable to relying on the accuracy of enumerators’ returns. As regards compilation, the 1841 census returned the occupations of all persons active in the labour force by age and gender; the 1821 census returned all persons active; the 1831 census returned males upwards of twenty years of age in agriculture, industry and services (except servants), all male servants and female servants (age unspecified). As regards the system of classification, the 1821 occupation returns were made under three, and the 1831 under eleven general headings with no return of the numbers engaged in the component occupations of these headings (but see note 1); the 1841 census provided a return of the numbers of males and females engaged in each of 471 occupations classified as belonging to one of nine classes: ministering to food; clothing; lodging; furniture; machinery, etc.; health; charity; justice; education; religion; unclassified.

The Belfast cotton industry revisited

Throughout much of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries linen textile production made an important contribution, in terms of output, exports, employment and capital accumulation, to the economy of north-east Ireland. However, for a brief period of a few decades, from the 1780s to the 1830s, the dominance of linen was challenged by a mechanised cotton industry centred on the Belfast area producing both mill-spun yarn and hand- and machinewoven piece goods. This period witnessed a shift of local resources of capital and labour from linen into cotton and back into linen in the space of half a century. The story of Belfast’s brief flirtation with cotton is a difficult one to put together. Both narrative and analysis are constrained by a lack of records, especially by a dearth of statistics on inputs and on output. The traditional view has been that the industry was made up of units of production which, smaller than their British rivals and lacking supplies of local coal, produced at an uncompetitive unit cost. Its relatively brief existence was sustained by a combination of war and protective tariffs and with their removal the cotton industry in Belfast, unable to compete with its rivals in Great Britain, quickly disappeared. The validity of this view has been challenged recently. It has been shown that at least for the 1830s when data are available horse power per establishment was not significantly lower in Belfast than for the United Kingdom as a whole; nor was the absence of local supplies of coal a major disadvantage given local wage costs. These revisions cast doubt on the notion that Belfast cotton spinning establishments were inherently uncompetitive. Not every observer is convinced however. Ollerenshaw in his essay on industry in nineteenth-century Ulster remains certain that the exit from cotton spinning was to a large extent forced and that wet spinning was a timely and fortuitous alternative. Similarly Cullen argues that the local industry was uniquely unable to withstand the depression of 1825 and after.