Epidemics, Inequality and Poverty in Preindustrial and Early Industrial Times
Mon, 7 February, 2022
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Wednesday, April 27th, 2022
via Zoom
We are pleased to invite you to the third webinar in the 2021-2022 Facing Inequality series, co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Institute for International Economic Policy. This is a platform for dialogue and debate. We invite you to engage with us in this series of important discussions.
Recent research has explored the distributive consequences of major historical epidemics, and the current crisis triggered by Covid-19 prompts us to look at the past for insights about how pandemics can affect inequalities in income, wealth, and health. The fourteenth-century Black Death, which is usually believed to have led to a significant reduction in economic inequality, has attracted the greatest attention – but the picture becomes much more complex if other epidemics are considered. This paper covers the worst epidemics of preindustrial times, usually caused by plague, as well as the cholera waves of the nineteenth. It shows how the distributive outcomes of lethal epidemics do not only depend upon mortality rates, but are mediated by a range of factors, chief among them the institutional framework in place at the onset of each crisis. It then explores how past epidemics affected poverty, arguing that highly lethal epidemics could reduce its prevalence through two deeply different mechanisms: redistribution towards the poor, or extermination of the poor.
About the Speaker:
Guido Alfani is Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Milan (Italy). He is also an Affiliated Scholar of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, New York (U.S.). An economic and social historian and an historical demographer, he published extensively on inequality and social mobility in the long run, on the history of epidemics (especially of plague) and of famines, and on systems of social alliance. Recent works include The Lion’s Share. Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe (2019, with Matteo Di Tullio) and Famine in European History (2017, with Cormac Ó Gráda). During 2012-16 he was the Principal Investigator of the project EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800 (www.dondena.unibocconi.it/EINITE), funded by the European Research Council (ERC), and from 2017 he is the Principal Investigator of a second ERC project, SMITE-Social Mobility and Inequality across Italy and Europe 1300-1800.
About the Discussants:
Abigail Agresta is Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University. Her research examines the religious, environmental, and public health history of the medieval Crown of Aragon. Her first monograph, The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia, will be published by Cornell University Press in July 2022.
Mark Koyama is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center. He is an economic historian and has written extensively on topics including comparative state development, religious freedom, and institutional development. His most recent book (with Jared Rubin) is “How the World Became Rich”.