Socioeconomic differences in population growth in 19th century Liaoning, China: a decomposition

Abstract

We decompose population growth in 19th century Liaoning in northeast China into the shares accounted for by different socioeconomic groups, and by time periods with different economic conditions as reflected in grain prices. This decomposition reveals who benefitted the most when social and economic conditions supported population increase. Previous studies of one region for which relevant data are available, northeast China, showed that birth and death rates varied according to community, household, and individual context, but did not investigate differences in growth rates by context, or the shares of population growth accounted for by each group. Using the same dataset, we decompose population growth by synthesizing differentials in mortality and fertility into estimates of implied growth rates of population subgroups and the shares of total population growth they account for. This decomposition framework can be applied in any setting where household registers or other sources allow for the measurement of the mortality and fertility rates of population subgroups at fixed points of time. We show that advantaged socioeconomic groups contributed disproportionately to population growth in northeast China, and that more growth took place when harvests were good, that is when grain prices were low. Even though mortality and fertility responses to grain price fluctuations varied across subgroups, there is no evidence of differential response of growth rates to these fluctuations. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for our understanding of population dynamics in the late Qing.