Population and Economy

Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population has for the past two centuries been a constant source of inspiration and debate for scholars working on relationships between population and economy in a historical perspective. This book sets a new standard in this active and influential field of research. The contributors go beyond the conventional European and North American geographical boundaries, bringing out new empirical findings and developing newarguments.The volume is divided into three parts. The first part takes up classical issues — the 'positive' and the 'preventive' checks and their determinants — raised by Malthus himself, and examines the issues against fresh evidence from Europe, America, and Asia. These issues are also themes of the second part, which is devoted to short-term fluctuations in mortality and fertility in relation to prices, wages, and other economic indicators. The final set of chapters is a coherent collection oftechnically sophisticated articles from an on-going international joint project concerned with how households respond to economic stress in different economic, social, and cultural settings, in traditional China, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, and Italy. With a brief, but well-organized introduction, thiscollection of scholarly essays offers both demographers and economic historians a wealth of exciting findings and stimulating insights.

Tommy Bengtsson, Professor in Economic History at Lund University and presently Professor in Demography at Odense University, has been working mainly on the complex relationship between population and economy, past and present.Osamu Saito, a Professor in the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, has been working in both economic history and historical demography.