Living Standards in the Past New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe [Hardcover]

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.

Introduction
1. Standards of living in 18th century China: Regional differences, temporal trends and incomplete evidence,Kenneth Pomeranz
2. Farm labour productivity in Jiangnan, 1620-1850,Li Bozhong
3. Wages, inequality and pre-industrial growth in Japan, 1727-1894,Osamu Saito
4. Agriculture, labour, and the standard of living in 18th century India,Prasannan Parthasarathi
5. Real wages in Europe and Asia: A first look at the long-term patterns,Robert C. Allen
6. Sketching the rise of real inequality in early modern europe,P. Hoffman, D. Jacks, P. Levin and P. Lindert
7. What happened to the standard of living before the industrial revolution? New evidence from the western part of the Netherlands,Jan Luiten van Zanden
8. Economic growth, human capital formation and consumption in western Europe before 1800,Jaime Reis
9. Health and nutrition in the pre-industrial era: Insights from a millennium of average heights in northern Europe,Richard Steckel
10. The burden of grandeur: Physical and economic well-being of the Russian population in the 18th century,Boris Mironov
11. Mental mortality as an indicator of the standard of living in 18th and 19th century Slavonia,E. Hammel and A. Gullickson
12. The standard of living in Denmark in the 18th and early 19th centuries,Hans Christian Johansen
13. Short-term demographic changes in relation to economic fluctuations: The case of Tuscany during pre-transitional period,M. Breschi, A. Fornasin, and G. Gonano
14. New evidel6