Living standards in the past: new perspectives on well-being in Asia and Europe

When did Europe pull ahead of Asia in terms of living standards? A number of well-known scholars compare economic and demographic indicators of well-being in the pre-industrial period. The emerging picture is not one of great differences, but of considerable similarities in standard of living between Europe and Asia before the Industrial Revolution.

Standards of living in eighteenth century China: regional differences, temporal trends, and incomplete evidence / Kenneth Pomeranz -- Farm labour productivity in Jiangnan, 1620-1850 / Li Bozhong -- Wages, inequality, and pre-industrial growth in Japan, 1727-1894 / Osamu Saito -- Agriculture, labour, and the standard of living in eighteenth-century India / Prasannan Parthasarathi -- Real wages in Europe and Asia: a first look at the long-term patterns / Robert C. Allen -- Sketching the rise of real inequality in early modern Europe / Philip T. Hoffman, David S. Jacks, Patricia A. Levin, and Peter H. Lindert -- What happened to the standard of living before the industrial revolution? new evidence from the western part of the Netherlands / Jan Luiten van Zanden -- Economic growth, human capital formation and consumption in Western Europe before 1800 / Jaime Reis -- Health and nutrition in the pre-industrial era: insights from a millennium of average heights in Northern Europe / Richard H. Steckel -- The burden of grandeur: physical and economic well-being of the Russian population in the eighteenth century / Boris Mironov -- Maternal mortality as an indicator of the standard of living in eighteenth and nineteenth century Slavonia / Eugene A. Hammel and Aaron Gullickson -- The standard of living in Denmark in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries / Hans Christian Johansen -- Short-term demographic changes in relation to economic fluctuations: the case of Tuscany during the pre-transitional period / Marco Breschi, Alessio Fornasin, and Giovanna Gonano -- New evidence on the standard of living in Sweden during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: long-term development of the demographic response to short-term economic stress / Tommy Bengtsson and Martin Dribe -- Individuals and communities facing economic stress: a comparison of two rural areas in nineteenth century Belgium / Michel Oris, Muriel Neven, and George Alter -- Living standards in Liaoning, 1749-1909: evidence from demographic outcomes / James Z. Lee and Cameron D. Campbell -- Demographic responses to short-term economic stress in eighteenth and nineteenth century rural Japan: evidence from two northeastern villages / Noriko O. Tsuya and Satomi Kurosu.