Kris Inwood

Discontinuities in Canadian economic growth, 1870-1985

Economic historians as diverse as Karl Marx, Lloyd Reynolds, and Walt Rostow view economic development in distinct periods separated by a change in the trend rate or pattern of growth. If the economy simultaneously experiences cyclical change, however, the change in trend can be difficult to identify. A useful example is presented by the debate about Canada’s early 20th century growth spurt, the “wheat boom.” Was the wheat boom a particularly exuberant upward cycle, or did it mark the beginning of a new and fundamentally different growth process (Hartland, 1955)? In a macroeconomic context this question is recognized as a problem of correctly decomposing a time series into trend and cyclical movements (Stock and Watson, 1988). Perron (1989) has proposed a technique to determine if exogenous shocks derived from war, technological innovation, or other international market changes were sufficiently powerful to alter the underlying trend rate of growth. Use of this technique on Canada’s new national income data over the period from 1870 to 1985 leads to the conclusion that the wheat boom and each of the two World Wars created a structural break in the growth process and that no other exogenous shock had a comparable impact. In the next section we provide a brief synopsis of Canadian growth between 1870 and 1985. In Section III we outline the technique used to determine if particular shocks had the effect of changing the trend rate of growth; technical aspects of the procedure are confined to an appendix.

Longitudinal Studies of Human Growth and Health: A Review of Recent Historical Research

This paper reviews recent literature using stature and weight as measures of human welfare with a particular interest in cliometric or historical research. We begin with an overview of anthropometric evidence of living standards and the new but fast-growing field of anthropometric history. This literature is always implicitly and often explicitly longitudinal in nature. We then discuss (i) systematic empirical research into the relationship between conditions in early life and later life health and mortality and (ii) historical evidence on the relationship between body mass, morbidity and mortality. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of historical sources and understandings to health economics and population health.

Health, Height, and the Household at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This article examines the health and height of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s who enlisted in the army at the time of the First World War, using a sample of recruits from the army service records. These are linked to their childhood circumstances as observed in the 1901 census. Econometric results indicate that height on enlistment was positively related to socio-economic class, and negatively to the number of children in the household in 1901 and the proportion of household members who were earners, as well as to the degree of crowding. Adding the characteristics of the locality has little effect on the household-level effects. However local conditions were important; in particular the industrial character of the district, local housing conditions, and the female illiteracy rate. These are interpreted as representing the negative effect on height of the local disease environment. The results suggest that changing conditions at both household and locality levels contributed to the increase in height and health in the following decades.

Bigger Establishments in Thicker Markets: Can We Explain Early Productivity Differentials between Canada and the United States?

We use establishment-level data describing manufacturers located in 128 border and near-border counties in Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Ontario to calculate Canadian relative to U.S. total factor productivity ratios for 25 industries. The data have been compiled from the manuscripts for the 1870 U.S. and 1871 Canadian census of manufacturing. Our results illustrate that the average U.S. establishment was approximately 7% more efficient than its Canadian counterpart in 1870-71. When we control for establishment size and market density the U.S. productivity advantage shrinks to slightly less than 3%.

The social consequences of legal reform: women and property in a Canadian community

This article examines patterns of property-holding in an Ontario town before and after legislation in 1872 and 1884 that permitted married women to hold property in their own name. The experience of Guelph follows that of other North American urban communities in which women substantially increased their share of urban property during this period. Single and widowed women achieved most of the gains although married women also increased their holding of real property. Indicators of long-term change derived from assessment records, census manuscripts, wills, mortgages and property transfers support the hypothesis that the legislation was instrumental in the rise of female ownership. The effect of the law was felt through various channels of causation, including a change in inheritance practice that favoured women.

Gender and Occupational Identity in a Canadian Census

Historians and social scientists encounter a range of methodolofical difficulties in their investigation of the patterns of work, income generation and occupational identity. Perhaps the largest challenge arises from the use of occupational designations such as those recorded in a national census or parish register. The authors use a Canadian census to show the limitations.

Tracking people over time in 19th century Canada for longitudinal analysis

Linking multiple databases to create longitudinal data is an important research problem with multiple applications. Longitudinal data allows analysts to perform studies that would be unfeasible otherwise. We have linked historical census databases to create longitudinal data that allow tracking people over time. These longitudinal data have already been used by social scientists and historians to investigate historical trends and to address questions about society, history and economy, and this comparative, systematic research would not be possible without the linked data. The goal of the linking is to identify the same person in multiple census collections. Data imprecision in historical census data and the lack of unique personal identifiers make this task a challenging one. In this paper we design and employ a record linkage system that incorporates a supervised learning module for classifying pairs of records as matches and non-matches. We show that our system performs large scale linkage producing high quality links and generating sufficient longitudinal data to allow meaningful social science studies. We demonstrate the impact of the longitudinal data through a study of the economic changes in 19th century Canada.

Poverty and Physical Well-being among the Coloured Population in South Africa

ABSTRACT We review the social construction of race and the experience of relative poverty and ill-health among South Africas Coloured population. We argue that childhood deprivation among Coloureds and race-based inequality in physical well-being, which is still visible today, began at least as early as the 1870s. The historical literature points to differences in morbidity and mortality between Whites and Coloureds before World War Two. New evidence from military reports of stature points to regional, socio-economic and urban influences on physical well-being which differed between Coloureds and Whites. Coloureds were much shorter even after adjusting for potentially confounding influences. The gap in stature changed very little between men born in the 1870s and those born in the 1920s.

Trade policy and industrial development: iron and steel in a small open economy, 18701913

In this paper we argue that effective tariff protection associated with the 1879 National Policy and the 1887 Tupper tariffs triggered investment in new, technologically advanced blast furnaces that were capable of accommodating rapid output expansion. This conclusion is based on an appreciation of the timing of late nineteenthcentury investments in Canada and their connection to changes in government policy and other demand determinants. In our empirical investigation we use new information on westbound transatlantic freight rates, intracontinental transport costs, and furnacespecific microdata, and we acknowledge the endogenous relationships linking investment to domestic demand, labour costs, and tariffs.

The Diversity of Industrial Experience: Cabinet and Furniture Manufacture in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario

The diversity of paths to industrialization is illustrated by the example of the cabinet- and furniture-manufacturing industry in Ontario, Canada. Complex and unpredictable demand combined with smaller markets and lower incomes than those in the United States and the relative abundance of wood to limit mechanization and the size of enterprise in the Canadian industry. Small and unpowered workshops remained competitive throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, creating a distinctive industrial experience that reflects the unique interaction of local demand and supply.