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Jordi Caum Julio: Famines and labour returns in colonial India

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Abstract:
Famines and epidemics are essential to understand labour returns and inequality in pre-industrial societies (Alfani 2022; Jedwab et al. 2022; Milanovic 2016; O’Grada 2007; Rota & Weisdorf 2020; Scheidel 2017). This paper explores the effect of the 1896-7 and 1899-00 Indian famines on wages across regions and sectors. Labour shortages induced by famines and epidemics might have raised wages. Alternatively, negative demographic shocks can lower labour productivity, decreasing labour demand and dragging down real wages (Alfani and Percoco, 2019). Preliminary staggered difference-in-differences results suggest that the late nineteenth-century famines had a negative short-term effect on the nominal and real wages of agricultural labourers as well as of low- and high-skilled urban workers. These effects were mediated by decreases in labour productivity originated by massive cattle losses and rural-urban migration.

Referent: Jordi Caum Julio, PhD (University of Manchester & Arthur Lewis Lab for Comparative Development)

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