Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution

Cover......Page 1
Frontmatter......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
List of tables......Page 13
List of figures......Page 17
Acknowledgments......Page 20
1.1 Looking backward from the present......Page 24
1.2 Placing Britain's city growth in perspective......Page 25
1.3 The issues......Page 28
2.1 Why do we care about the urban demographic transition?......Page 31
2.2 Reconstructing rural emigration, city immigration, and the urban transition......Page 32
2.3 Fertility and mortality in city and countryside......Page 34
2.4 Rural emigration and city immigration, 1776--1871......Page 39
2.5 Were Britain's cities full of young adults?......Page 50
2.6 The importance of being a young adult......Page 54
2.7 How the cities got to be young: The migrantselectivity bias......Page 59
2.8 Counterfactual analysis of the migrantselectivity bias......Page 67
2.9 What have we learned?......Page 71
Appendix 2.1 Words of caution about the data......Page 74
Appendix 2.2 The Cairncross and Williamson urban registration districts compared......Page 77
3.1 Introduction......Page 79
3.2 The resource content of the migrants: Setting the stage......Page 80
3.3 The human capital transfer embodied in the migrants......Page 95
3.4 Tying some demo-economic knots......Page 100
4.1 Internal migration between farm and nonfarm employment......Page 102
4.2 Where were the nonfarm jobs?......Page 104
4.3 The sources of nonfarm labor demand......Page 110
4.4 The bottom line......Page 120
Appendix 4.1 Estimating emigration from agriculture and immigration into nonagriculture, 1781--1861......Page 121
5.1 How did city labor markets work? The Todaro model......Page 122
5.2 Absorbing city immigrants in nineteenth-century Britain......Page 125
5.3 Urban workers in 1851: Earnings and unemployment......Page 129
5.4 Testing competing views of urban labor-market absorption......Page 133
5.5 Implications and qualifications......Page 142
Appendix 5.1 Hypothesis testing: City adult males in Britain, 1851......Page 145
6.1 Irish immigration and the labor-surplus model: Three questions......Page 149
6.2 Who were the Irish and where did they go in Britain?......Page 152
6.3 How big was the Irish inflow?......Page 159
6.4 How the British labor market absorbed the Irish......Page 162
6.5 Britain's immigrant absorptive capacity......Page 170
6.6 Counterfactual: A British industrial revolution without the Irish?......Page 171
6.7 Assessing the elastic labor-supply model......Page 176
Appendix 6.1 Estimating the Irish in Britain, 1787--1871......Page 181
Appendix 6.2 British and Irish-born labor-participation rates, 1821--61......Page 186
Appendix 6.3 A formal statement of the long-run model......Page 190
Appendix 6.4 Applying the long-run model to the period 1821--61: Actuals, counterfactuals, and history......Page 197
7.1 Two competing views......Page 198
7.2 Labor market disequilibrium and migration response: The evidence for failure......Page 201
7.3 Nominal-wage gaps: A comparative assessment......Page 205
7.4 Were wage gaps illusory?......Page 207
7.5 The quantitative importance of labor-market failure: Deadweight losses......Page 214
7.6 The quantitative importance of labor-market failure: Distribution and accumulation effects......Page 220
7.7 Factor-market failure in general equilibrium......Page 223
7.8 Why didn't manufacturing capital migrate to the countryside to exploit the rural labor surplus in the South?......Page 230
7.9 Implications......Page 231
Appendix 7.1 Poor-relief payments......Page 234
Appendix 7.2 Modeling the general equilibrium effects of factor-market failure......Page 235
8.1 Setting the stage......Page 239
8.2 Dealing with some important irrelevancies......Page 241
8.3 Were there too many migrants in Britain's cities? The relevant evidence......Page 246
8.4 The planners' dilemma: Who gains and who loses from migration?......Page 249
8.5 Death and the marginal social costs of city growth......Page 250
9.1 The perils of nineteenth-century city life......Page 251
9.2 The high cost of urban housing......Page 253
9.3 Crowding, disamenities, and mortality in the cities......Page 263
9.4 Urban disamenities and the wage bribe......Page 266
9.5 Was the industrial revolution worth it? The workers' view......Page 277
9.6 Trading off environment for commodities......Page 280
Appendix 9.1 Data for the 1905 hedonic regressions......Page 282
Appendix 9.2 Data for the 1834 hedonic regressions......Page 284
Appendix 9.3 "Sweet Auburn" and "Sheffield" for the migration experiment......Page 285
Appendix 9.4 "Sweet Auburn" and "Sheffield" for infant-mortality rates......Page 286
10.1 Optimal versus actual investment behavior......Page 287
10.2 Should Britain have introduced sanitary reform faster and sooner?......Page 301
10.3 Decrowding city housing: What would it have cost?......Page 317
10.4 The agenda......Page 323
Appendix 10.1 Estimating urban crowding in the nineteenth century......Page 325
References......Page 329
Index......Page 350