Secular changes in the short-term preventive, positive, and temperature checks to population growth in Europe, 1460 to 1909

Abstract

Annual variations in births, marriages, deaths, grain prices, and quarterly temperature series in England, France, Prussia, and Sweden are analyzed using a distributed lag model. The results provide support for the existence of the shortterm preventive, positive and temperature checks to population growth. Decreases in fertility and nuptiality are generally associated with increases in grain prices. Increases in mortality appear to be associated with high grain prices, cold winters and hot summers. Changes in these responses over time are examined within the context of economic development. ‘The causes of a high mortality are various; but the greater number of known causes may be referred to five heads: 1) excessive cold or heat; 2) privation of food; 3) effluvial poisons generated in marshes, foul prisons, camps, cities; and epidemic diseases, such as typhus, plague, small pox, and other zymotic diseases; 4) mechanical and chemical injuries; 5) spontaneous disorders to which the structure of the human organization renders it liable.’ - Farr (1846, p. 164). ‘...a foresight of the difficulties attending the rearing of a family acts as a preventive check, and the actual distresses of some of the lower classes, by which they are disabled from giving the proper food and attention to their children, acts as a positive check to the natural increase of population.’ - Malthus (1798, Chapter 4).