Turnpikes, canals, and economic growth in England and Wales, 1800-1850 Dan Bogart, Max Satchell, Eduard J Alvarez-Palau, Xuesheng You, and Leigh Shaw Taylor1 Preliminary Draft May 2017 Abstract Improvements to roads and rivers and the construction of canals were the largest infrastructure investments in England during the industrial revolution. This paper estimates their effects on local population and employment growth using new GIS data covering all parishes in England and Wales or more than 9000 units. The main results show that greater access to the turnpike and inland waterway network around 1800 increased parish population growth from 1801 to 1851. Greater access to infrastructure also increased secondary and tertiary employment growth from 1817 to 1851. Greater access had the opposite effect on agriculture employment growth, we think because it was more land intensive. In a final exercise, we show that English and Welsh population growth would have been 3.9% lower between 1801 and 1851 if road and inland waterways were equal to the late 17th century. As this represents about 8% of the total, it appears that turnpike roads, rivers, and canals were one of several contributors to growth during the industrial revolution. 1 Bogart is an associate Professor, Department of Economics, UC Irvine,
[email protected], Alvarez-Palau is a visiting Scholar, Department of History, University of Cambridge,
[email protected], You is a research Associate, Department of History, University of Cambridge,
[email protected], Satchell is a research Associate, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
[email protected], and Shaw Taylor is a Professor, Department of History, University of Cambridge
[email protected].