Poverty in Germany from the Black Death until the Beginning of Industrialization

Abstract

This paper provides macro-level estimates of the prevalence of poverty in preindustrial Germany, from the Black Death to the onset of industrialization in the nineteenth century. Based on a new body of evidence we show that poverty declined after two large-scale catastrophes: the Black Death in the fourteenth century and the Thirty Years’ War in the seventeenth. Poverty increased substantially in the sixteenth century, and stagnated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This pattern is broadly in line with a Malthusian model of the preindustrial economy, but also with several other explanations of poverty. Circa 1600, poverty and inequality extraction were at a historical peak – right when social conflict erupted in Germany.