There seems to be research showing that world poverty rates have declined since 1800, see eg this. Is there any research on world poverty rates before this period? I am guessing that during this period poverty in much of the world would have gone up as a result of European colonisation.
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How would you define poverty pre 1800? – Giskard Mar 07 '16 at 23:11
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maybe infant mortality or availability of food/shelter? – Max Flander Mar 07 '16 at 23:18
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This paper may interest you: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8460 – BB King Mar 21 '16 at 00:07
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This is only for Europe unfortunately, but Bob Allen has a famous paper in which he presents reconstructed data for real wages in different European cities from 1350 all the way to 1799:
Allen, Robert C. "The great divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War." Explorations in economic history 38.4 (2001): 411-447.
From real wages and price data, he then infers a measure of (extreme) poverty.
Look at Figure 5 in the paper. The scale of the y-axis is a measure of poverty in which 1 is the poverty threshold. Values above 1 on the y-axis correspond to real wages lower than survival rate (i.e. that do not allow a survival caloric intake), and values above 1 indicate a real wage above survival rate.
Martin Van der Linden
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1I believe the data from the paper is publicly available on Bob Allen's website https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/People/sites/Allen/SitePages/Biography.aspx. – Martin Van der Linden Apr 15 '16 at 01:50