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Real Wages and the Family: Adjusting Real Wages to
Changing Demography in Pre-Modern England
Eric Schneider
University of Oxford
Abstract
Thi=
spaperusesdemographicdatadrawnfromWrigleyetal.’s(1997)family reconstitutionsof26EnglishparishestoadjustAllen’s(2001)realwagestothe changingdemograph=
yofearlymodernEngland.Usingparityprogressionratios(a fertility measure) and age spec=
ific
mortality for children and parents, model families are predicted in two
reference periods 1650-1700 and 1750-1800. These models yield two levels of
interesting results. At the individual family level, we can measure how dif=
ferent
families’ real wages changed over the family life cycle as additional
children were born. At the aggregate level, we can predict thousands of
families using Monte Carlo simulation, creating a realistic distribution of
median family real wages in the economy. There are two main findings. First,
pregnancy and lactation do not create cyclical effects in the family’s
income. Instead, most families’ welfare ratios decline steadilyacrossthefamilylifecycleuntilchildrenbegintoleavethehousehold, increasingthewelfareratios.Second,Allen’srealwagesunderstateormatchthe median of the
predicted demography-adjusted distributions.