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A poor inquiry: Poverty and living standards in pre-famine Ireland

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  • Doran, Áine

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between pre-famine living conditions and famine severity. I digitise the parish-level returns of the Irish Poor Inquiry and use these to explain the co-variates of increasing poverty in the early nineteenth century and examine how they impacted the severity of The Great Famine. I find that income acted as a key co-variate of increasing poverty, with the poor becoming poorer. However, it is levels, not changes, of poverty which are found to be a key determinant of famine severity, alongside the structural features of parishes, such as their distance from the nearest navigable waterway. The paper also fails to find evidence of increasing poverty or famine severity being a result of overpopulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Doran, Áine, 2021. "A poor inquiry: Poverty and living standards in pre-famine Ireland," QUCEH Working Paper Series 21-01, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:qucehw:202101
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    poverty; living conditions; famine; Ireland; demography;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

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