Food for thought : comparing estimates of food availability in England and Wales, 1700-1914

Harris, Bernard and Floud, Roderick and Hong, Sok Chul (2014) Food for thought : comparing estimates of food availability in England and Wales, 1700-1914. Preprint / Working Paper. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. (https://doi.org/10.3386/w20177)

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Abstract

In The Changing Body (Cambridge University Press and NBER, 2011), the authors presented a series of estimates showing the number of calories available for human consumption in England and Wales at various points in time between 1700 and 1909/13. The current paper corrects an error in our original figures but also compares the estimates of The Changing Body with those published by a range of other authors. The differences reflect disagreements over a number of issues, including the amount of land under cultivation, the extraction and wastage rates for cereals and pulses and the number of animals supplying meat and dairy products. The paper considers recent attempts to achieve a compromise between these estimates and challenges claims that there was a dramatic reduction in either food availability or the average height of birth cohorts in the late-eighteenth century.

ORCID iDs

Harris, Bernard ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7118-1118, Floud, Roderick and Hong, Sok Chul;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)