Growth and welfare provisioning: lessons from the English Poor Laws?
✍ Scribed by Sonia Bhalotra
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 98 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0954-1748
- DOI
- 10.1002/jid.843
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A majority of individuals in poor countries have volatile incomes and are often unable to maintain adequate levels of consumption. 1 There has nevertheless been limited interest in academic and government circles in state-guided provision of social security in these countries. This is, likely, because it is thought unaffordable at prevailing levels of income per capita. In addition, the administration of welfare is thought to be outside the scope of governments in poor countries, where the presence of a large informal sector in the economy poses severe information problems. Yet, from as early as the 17th century and well before the sharp rise in incomes associated with the industrial revolution, the state in England operated a fairly sophisticated system of welfare provisioning that was responsive to economic and demographic shocks such as harvest failure, unemployment, illness, widowhood, orphanhood and old age. Preliminary work by historians suggests that welfare funds raised by a compulsory parish rate yielded resources in England that were unmatched both in level and rate of growth in other parts of Europe before the late 19th century. Might a closer look at the English poor laws offer insights in to the feasibility and design of welfare in today's developing countries? Might poor relief in England have encouraged demographic change and economic growth in ways that would be merited in poor countries today? Might it have contributed to building institutional capacity, starting at the community level? These questions do not appear to have been considered before. Historians and historical demographers have created an exciting literature on the manner in which the poor laws operated and, independently, on changes in fertility and mortality rates in pre-industrial England. However, the two have not been brought together, partly because of data constraints. This paper argues that there is a research agenda here with considerable unexploited potential. 2
📜 SIMILAR VOLUMES