Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/231311 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
QUCEH Working Paper Series No. 21-01
Publisher: 
Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), Belfast
Abstract: 
This paper studies the relationship between pre-famine living conditions and famine severity. I digitise the parish-level returns of the Irish Poor Inquiry and use these to explain the co-variates of increasing poverty in the early nineteenth century and examine how they impacted the severity of The Great Famine. I find that income acted as a key co-variate of increasing poverty, with the poor becoming poorer. However, it is levels, not changes, of poverty which are found to be a key determinant of famine severity, alongside the structural features of parishes, such as their distance from the nearest navigable waterway. The paper also fails to find evidence of increasing poverty or famine severity being a result of overpopulation.
Subjects: 
poverty
living conditions
famine
Ireland
demography
JEL: 
J10
I32
N33
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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