A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World Draft, 1 October 2006 Forthcoming, Princeton University Press, 2007 He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind --Samuel Johnson Gregory Clark University of California Davis, CA 95616 (
[email protected]) 1. Introduction…………………………………….. 1-13 The Malthusian Trap: Economic Life to 1800 2. The Logic of the Malthusian Economy…………. 15-39 3. Material Living Standards……………………….. 40-76 4. Fertility………………………………………….. 78-99 5. Mortality………………………………………… 100-131 6. Malthus and Darwin: Survival of the Richest……. 132-152 7. Technological Advance…………………………..153-179 8. Preference Changes………………………………180-207 The Industrial Revolution 9. Modern Growth: the Wealth of Nations………… 208-227 10. The Problem of the Industrial Revolution……….. 228-256 11. The Industrial Revolution in Britain, 1760-1860…. 257-293 12 Social Consequences of the Industrial Revolution.. 294-330 The Great Divergence 13. The Great Divergence: World Growth since 1800.. 331-364 14. The Proximate Sources of Divergence…………... 365-394 15. Why Isn’t the Whole World Developed?.................. 395-420 16. Conclusion: Strange New World………………… 421-422 Technical Appendix……………………………... 423-427 References……………………………………….. 428-451 ii 1 Introduction The basic outline of world economic history is surprisingly simple. Indeed it can be summarized in one diagram: figure 1.1. Before 1800 income per person – the food, clothing, heat, light, housing, and furnishings available per head - varied across socie- ties and epochs. But there was no upward trend. A simple but powerful mechanism explained in this book, the Malthusian Trap, kept incomes within a range narrow by modern standards.