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SUMMARY:How Equality Created Poverty: Japanese Wealth Distribution and Liv
 ing Standards 1600-1870 - Yuzuru Kumon (Bocconi University)
DTSTART:20200129T131500Z
DTEND:20200129T143000Z
UID:TALK137449@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31344
DESCRIPTION:Despite its sophistication\, Early Modern Japan\, 1600-1868 ha
 d among the lowest real wage levels ever recorded\, 40% of those in pre-in
 dustrial England. This paper shows that this puzzle can be partly resolved
  if we take into account the greater equality of land-holdings in pre-indu
 strial Japan than in Europe. In England by 1700\, 70% of the rural populat
 ion were landless but in Japan only 13%. Paradoxically\, as I show theoret
 ically\, in the Malthusian demographic regime of the pre-industrial world 
 greater equality should generate lower living standards. I show empiricall
 y that landless families in Japan were unable to reproduce demographically
 . Had most households been landless\, as in Europe\, the population would 
 have been unsustainable without higher wages. If\, as many historians beli
 eve\, high wages and living standards in western Europe explain the onset 
 of the Industrial Revolution\, then Japan’s failure to industrialize cou
 ld have been shaped by its unusual pre-industrial equality.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 6\, Faculty of History
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