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The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774 / Trevor Burnard, Laura Panza, Jeffrey G. Williamson.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Burnard, Trevor, 1960-
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23897.
- NBER working paper series no. w23897
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Other Title:
- Social Implications of Sugar
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.
- Summary:
- This paper provides the first quantitative assessment of Jamaican standards of living and income inequality around 1774. To this purpose we compute welfare ratios for a range of occupations and build a social table. We find that the slave colony had extremely high living costs, which rose steeply during the American War of Independence, and low standards of living, particularly for its enslaved population. Our results also show that due to its extreme poverty surrounding extreme wealth Jamaica was the most unequal place in the pre-modern world. Furthermore, all of these characteristics applied to the free population alone.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- October 2017.
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