Labour supply

In the old story, the chief culprit behind the decrease in farm labour productivity is rapid population growth. But this Malthusian explanation does not square with the reality of Jiangnan at all.

during the period we are concerned with. According to my estimates, Jiangnan's population increased from about 20 million in 1620 to 36 million in 1850: an increase of 80% over 230 years (BozhongLi 1994⅞ 1998: 19—20). In other words, the average growth rate of the Jiangnan population was only about 0.3% a year. By the standards of the ‘early modern' world, this rate is quite low⁷ More surprisingly, and contrary to the prevailing view, this slow growth cannot be attributed to such Malthusian ‘positive checks' as wars, civil wars, natural disasters, or epidemic diseases, but to effective birth control. This is what kept the rate of population growth below that of economic growth.⁸

Accelerated urbanization also had an important influence on demographic change in Jiangnan. The region's urbanization rate increased from 15% to 20% between 1620 and 1850, which means that the population grew one quarter less rapidly in rural areas than in urban areas. Even though the total population in Jiangnan increased by 80%, the number of adults able to work, both male and female, increased by only 70% in rural areas during these two centuries. Moreover, general descriptions by contemporary observers give an impression of a situation in which a considerable proportion of the able rural adult population were not engaged in agricultural or industrial activities, and that this proportion was increasing during the period. Without accurate statistics, I could only make a conservative estimate of 10% as the proportion of non-working, able adults in that period (Bozhong Li 1998: 20—1, 2000a: ch. 9). If these people were excluded, the increase in the total rural labour force would be smaller still.

Rural industrialization contributed greatly to the slow growth of the labour supply in Jiangnan agriculture. The rapid development of rural industry, especially textiles, created a large and increasing number of jobs for the rural labour force. More and more peasants, mainly female, were drawn from farming to rural industry. Their departure created a shortage of labour in Jiangnan agriculture, not a surplus of labour as is commonly believed.⁹ From the sixteenth century on, seasonal labour was increasingly used in farming¹⁰ since insufficient labour could be found from within the family. When all of these changes are taken into consideration, we can see that during the period under study the farm labour force grew much more slowly in Jiangnan than previously believed.

2.2