Conclusion
Overall, we find little evidence that living standards in the northern and southern state farm systems declined during the nineteenth century. If anything, they appear to have improved.
Marital fertility rates rose in the north and south. Fertility rates also ceased being sensitive to economic conditions in the last half of the nineteenth century in every region except Daoyi. Couples, apparently, no longer needed to delay births when grain prices were high to maintain minimum consumption levels. As for marriage, some men married at progressively earlier ages, though the proportion of men who eventually married changed little. Mortality rates everywhere except Daoyi, moreover, were insensitive to grain fluctuations.One of the most intriguing pieces of evidence of improving living standards in northern and southern Liaoning was the decline in male child mortality. This decline is highly unexpected, and additional investigations are clearly necessary. Since there are no other direct measurements of trends in child mortality in nineteenth-century China other than for the members of the Qing Imperial lineage (Lee, Wang, and Campbell 1994), it is impossible to determine whether or not this is anomalous. The implications of the decline also need to be examined. If mortality fell at the same pace in very early childhood, or infancy, then the apparent rise in fertility may reflect increases in the numbers of children who survive to an age when their parents register them, and not actual increases in the number of births.
The residents of the central region were not as fortunate as the residents of the north and south. In the centre, especially in Daoyi, the standard of living appears to
have stagnated or declined. Marital fertility in Daoyi and the other central state farm systems did not change between 1780 and 1888. In Daoyi, fertility rates remained as sensitive to prices between 1834 and 1888 as they had been between 1780 and 1834, if not more so.
Early marriage increased the least in Daoyi and in the remaining central state farm systems, and marriage rates of men aged 26—40 fell the fastest in Daoyi. The central state farms other than Daoyi had the slowest reduction in male child mortality and a sustained increase in elderly female mortality. Finally, only in Daoyi were mortality rates sensitive to grain prices at all ages and for both sexes.The differences between north and south on the one hand and the centre on the other are linked to their economic contexts. The central state farm systems were in densely settled areas close to Shenyang. The city was a key administrative centre, and its fortunes were tied to those of the Qing state, which faced numerous and increasing difficulties through the nineteenth century. Dependent on such a city and living in a densely populated area with few economic opportunities, the residents of the central state farm systems had to adjust. They kept their fertility in check, adjusting it according to economic conditions. They were unable to indulge in early marriage for their sons in the same way that families in other regions could. Finally, in Daoyi especially, families appear not to have been able to maintain consumption at minimum levels during times of economic stress. Across the entire age range, death rates rose when prices did.
The north and south were more sparsely populated, so that through the entire period there was ample room for growth. The south especially benefited from proximity to the coast and to the port at Yingkou in particular. Married couples increased their fertility throughout the period, and eventually reached the point where they no longer adjusted it in response to short-term economic stress. More so than the residents of the central region, they indulged in early marriage for their sons. Finally, they could ride out periods of high prices without any consequences for their mortality rates.
The overall picture of Liaoning that emerges is very different from the one commonly painted for China as a whole from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, which emphasizes stagnation or decline.
With the exception of the densely settled area immediately around Shenyang conditions seem to have been improving. This reflected the likely availability of open land and in the south, proximity to a port that was initially involved in the coastal trade and later involved in international trade. While these results cannot be generalized to other regions in China, and do not shed much light on Pomeranz's (2000) suggestion that living standards for the country as a whole may have declined during the nineteenth century because a rising share of the population lived in regions where living standards were low, they are nevertheless one piece of the puzzle. They do suggest that there may have been a diversity of trends, not only between regions, but within them as well. They confirm that a proper assessment of changes in China during the nineteenth century will require examination of empirical results from all of the regions.More generally, the results confirm the utility of examining demographic outcomes to help reconstruct trends in living standards in the past, especially in situations where more direct measures are absent. A classic approach consisting of an examination of time trends in three different rates, mortality, fertility, and nuptiality, yielded broadly consistent results. In the north and south, when mortality fell, fertility increased, and for some men, marriage became earlier. In the centre, when mortality rose, fertility decreased, and marriage remained unchanged or became less common. More importantly, a new approach applied in the Eurasia project that treats the sensitivity of rates as an indicator of low living standards (Bengtsson, Campbell, Lee et al. 2004) yielded results consistent with those from the classic approach. Fertility and mortality were most sensitive to economic conditions in the central state farms, which according to the results form the classic approach, had been the worst off. We expect that additional refinements of this approach are likely to be even more fruitful.