UNIVERSITEIT GENT

FACULTEIT ECONOMIE EN BEDRIJFSKUNDE ACADEMIEJAAR 2010 – 2011

Economic Growth and Living Standards in the Pre-Industrial Low Countries

Masterproef voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van Master in de Algemene Economie

Jord Hanus onder leiding van

Prof. dr. Glenn Rayp

[2]

[3]

UNIVERSITEIT GENT

FACULTEIT ECONOMIE EN BEDRIJFSKUNDE ACADEMIEJAAR 2010 – 2011

Economic Growth and Living Standards in the Pre-Industrial Low Countries

Masterproef voorgedragen tot het bekomen van de graad van Master in de Algemene Economie

Jord Hanus onder leiding van

Prof. dr. Glenn Rayp

[4]

Permission

Ondergetekende verklaart dat de inhoud van deze masterproef mag geraadpleegd en/of gereproduceerd worden, mits bronvermelding. Jord HANUS

[5]

Preface

The history of this master thesis is no doubt somewhat a-typical. Work-related time constraints foreclosed intensive interaction between myself and my supervisor Professor Glenn Rayp. Nonetheless I hope to have made him proud, or at the very least interested in this particular aspect of the economic and social history of the pre-industrial Low Countries. Many thanks are due to my colleagues at the History Department of Antwerp University, and especially my girlfriend Bauke.

Lier, 3 August 2011

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Table of Contents

Permission ................................................................................................................................................. 4

Preface ....................................................................................................................................................... 5

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... 6

List of Tables & Figures ......................................................................................................................... 7

I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 8

II. Economic Growth in the Early Modern Low Countries .................................................... 10

III. Income Inequality and Economic Growth ............................................................................ 14

IV. From Relative to Absolute Living Standards ........................................................................ 18

V. Real Inequality in Early Modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch ............................................................. 22

VI. Conclusions: From Nominal to Real Inequality ................................................................... 31

VII. Appendix [Extended Version] ................................................................................................. 34

VIII. Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 46

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List of Tables & Figures

Figure 1. Trends in GDP per capita and real wages per capita, 1500-1650………………….12 Figure 2. House rent inequalities in the Low Countries, 1500-1750………………………...16 Table 1. Absolute income distributions in 's-Hertogenbosch expressed in welfare ratios, 1502-1636……………………………………………………………………….………………..…20 Figure 3. Share of women and widows in fiscal levies, 1502-1636…………………………….24 Table 2. Real inequality in ‗s-Hertogenbosch, 1500-1636………………………………………28 Figure 4. Summary graph: income inequality in 's-Hertogenbosch, 1502-1636…………………30 Table A.1. Statistical description of the fiscal levies of 's-Hertogenbosch, 1497-1656 (all figures are intra muros)……………………………………………………………………………….38 Figure A.1. Share of house rent in estimated annual income, 1506……………………………44 Figure A.2. Income elasticity of house rent, 1506……………………………………………..45 Table A.2. Gross Urban Income of 's-Hertogenbosch, 1500-1640…………………………….46

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Economic Growth and Living Standards in the Pre-

Industrial Low Countries

I. Introduction

In late medieval and early modern Europe, so goes the classic canon, economic development was

generally sporadic and erratic. Sustained economic growth defined in terms of consistently rising

average incomes was a decisively industrial and (late) nineteenth-century achievement. Before the

massive energetic potential of steam was fully unlocked and a plethora of technological

innovations sent a number of Western economies spinning in a spiral of ever increasing

productivity, growth was entirely haphazard, unsustained and checked by technological

constraints, counterproductive population behaviour and diminishing returns on all sides. In

recent years a more optimist reading of Europe‘s pre-industrial economic history has hatched.

After a first round of pan-European structural economic growth during the high Middle Ages

(900-1300), the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries witnessed unrivalled

expansion of the Low Countries as the centre of gravity of the European economy shifted from

the Mediterranean to the North Sea.1 Between 1450 and 1650, the Southern and Northern

Netherlands recorded important growth and productivity gains, not in the least fuelled by their

international gateways Antwerp and Amsterdam. Where better than on the banks of the rivers

Scheldt and IJ could one witness the splendour of the burgeoning world economy first hand?

The qualitative contours of this expansive era are well established and largely uncontested. In the

fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Southern Netherlands, productivity gains based on product and

process innovations and rising human capital levels went hand in glove with important late-

medieval spells of creative destruction in the urban industries and accelerating diversification and

specialisation.2 Stimulated by a more efficient institutional framework and fuelled by a medieval

‗jump start‘, progress was even more impressive in the seventeenth-century Northern

Netherlands, for some the fledgling ‗first modern economy‘.3

The sixteenth-century Southern Netherlands experienced a more modest pre-modern economic

expansion. Together with a rapid demographic expansion, the famed price revolution and

massive structural transformations in global networks of trade and industry, the regions of

Brabant and Flanders most notably benefited from important productivity gains. The short- and

1 See the recent synthesis in van Zanden, The long road. 2 Van der Wee, The growth; Van der Wee, ―Industrial dynamics‖; Van der Wee, ―Structural changes‖; Van Uytven, ―De triomf van Antwerpen‖; Blondé and Limberger, ―De gebroken welvaart‖. 3 van Bavel and van Zanden, ―The jump-start‖; de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy; de Vries, ―Dutch economic growth‖; van Zanden, ―The ‗revolt of the early modernists‘‖.

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long-term welfare effects of these dynamics of Smithian (and Schumpeterian) growth are less

clear. Indeed, we are still largely in the dark to what extent the economic advance of this age did

benefit the labouring masses, the skilled and artisanal middling groups and the merchant-

entrepreneurs dominating international trade from their Antwerp base. Apparently contradictory

claims have been made that alternatively stress creeping processes of rising proletarianization and

poverty or conversely emphasise the agreeable living standards broad middling groups enjoyed.

In the longer run, old ideas of a profound seventeenth-century economic and social contraction

rooted in typical Malthusian and Ricardian forces have been corrected, but it is still unsure how

the ‗Indian summer‘ of the Southern Netherlands affected local urban and rural living standards

and real incomes.4 Did the urban centres of Brabant and Flanders develop a sort of economic

growth capable of sustaining welfare gains for prolonged periods of time? In what way did the

original sixteenth-century boom lift the real incomes of all social groups, or but of a happy few?

Was there a price to pay for growth, or were its effects benign for all? Did the growth in the

Northern and/or Southern Netherlands reduce or enlarge inequalities in income and living

standards? Was the (alleged) rise in incomes associated with economic progress a continued

achievement or one annulled as expansion grounded to a standstill? The answers to such

questions are important, for they bear on the nature of this particular boom of ‗pre-modern‘

economic growth. The Southern Netherlands, famed both then and now for its sixteenth-century

affluence, offer a prime case in point to assess the growth potential of a relatively advanced pre-

industrial economy. By expanding the chronological scope beyond its period of expansion, we

can come to fully appreciate the economic and welfare effects of these years of post-Smithian

development as well.

Total and average output and incomes comprise the focal points of literature on economic

growth in the past. Assessing living standards requires a different vocabulary, even though many

economic historians accept average income (GDP per capita) as a sufficient proxy. In fact, recent

evidence discloses a robust secular divergence between GDP per capita and real wages in early

modern Europe.5 Consider the Dutch Republic, rightly famous for its exceptional Golden Age

growth rates in per capita output. At the same time, however, real wages stagnated and income

inequality increased, leaving wide open the question whether or not living standards advanced

hand in glove with economic expansion.6

This finding exemplifies the need to critically reassess the relationship between economic growth,

income inequality and living standards. Historians of the Southern Netherlands have studied the

4 Klep, ―Het Brabantse stedensysteem‖; Soly, ―Social relations‖; Aerts, ―Economie‖. 5 Angeles, ―GDP per capita or real wages?‖. 6 van Zanden, ―Tracing the beginning‖; Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality; van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖.

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distributional outcome of spells of growth, in particular the sixteenth-century boom with roaring

Antwerp at its heart, and have as noted above come to contradictory conclusions. This paper

seeks new answers in two innovative places: first, it will be shown that incomes at all income

brackets swelled considerably during the sixteenth-century expansion (1500-60), and that over the

longer run especially the poorer sorts reaped the benefits of the long sixteenth-century economic

history. In the long run and in line with recent findings on pre-industrial growth spurts, the long

sixteenth century had no sustained impact on urban living standards, although it is suggested that

the lowest income brackets were in actual fact (mildly) better off around 1650 than in 1500.

Second, by fully incorporating the social biases of the period‘s demographic trends and relative

price movements, the recently developed concept of ‗real inequality‘ will get a factual application.7

The detailed analysis underpinning the construction of absolute living standards allows to socially

adjusting living standards for the diverging price trends of staples and luxuries during the early

modern period and the sixteenth-century price revolution in particular.

Studying the middle-sized city of ‗s-Hertogenbosch, situated to the north of the duchy of

Brabant, allows to capture the core characteristics of this period‘s economic history in terms of

economic growth, stagnation and decline and the diverging social consequences of this trajectory.

The following section (II) reviews our current appreciation of the long-term growth trajectories

in the Low Countries, including detailed estimates for the city of ‗s-Hertogenbosch. Then, based

on a series of exceptional fiscal registers, section III assesses the effects of the long sixteenth

century on nominal income inequality levels. The following sections (IV and V) constitute the

innovative core of this paper, connecting relative inequality patterns to absolute living standards.

In order to estimate real inequality trends, attention will be drawn to the socially biased effects of

the price and demographic histories of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlands (and

Europe) on economic inequality. The introduction of the concept of real inequality will reveal

that (trends in) nominal inequality figures might be very misleading indeed. The concluding

section offers a brief discussion of a number of explanatory variables.

II. Economic Growth in the Early Modern Low Countries

To fully measure and assess economic growth in the past, historical national accounts present the

most comprehensive theoretical approach. If our interest lies in welfare, living standards and the

social consequences of growth, however, growing criticism of GDP fetishism in contemporary

policy should provide ample warning for the difficulties associated with using total and average

7 See Hoffman e.a., ―Real inequality‖; Hoffman e.a., ―Sketching the rise‖.

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output as indicators of welfare.8 Indeed, it has been established that in early modern Europe

(especially in economically booming regions) GDP per capita and real wages, a much-favoured

indicator of living standards, diverged markedly.9 This finding should come as no surprise from a

theoretical point of view. The real wage measures the purchasing power of skilled and unskilled

labourers and therefore reflects the relative price of labour. Total or average output conversely

incorporates other production factors. In periods of (capitalist) expansion the economies of pre-

industrial Europe grew more capital-intensive, thereby loosening or completely severing the

connection between labour and total income. This happened in industrialising England, in the

Dutch Republic, and indeed as we will see in the sixteenth-century Southern Netherlands as

well.10 Increasing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century labour-intensity suggested by Jan de Vries‘

industrious revolution hypothesis could have had the opposite effect, but at present solid

quantitative support is missing.11

At this point it is useful to take stock of the quantitative evidence presently available, even

though much of the historical national accounts are still in progress and therefore liable to future

change.12 Figure 1 summarizes the main findings for the Northern and Southern Netherlands

during the long sixteenth century (1500-1650). From a global perspective (not reported), the

GDP per capita estimates by and large confirm the qualitative understanding generations of

historians had accumulated and the more recent global evidence on real wages.13 While the rest of

early modern Europe stagnated at best, the North Sea area, especially England and the Northern

Netherlands, expanded strongly, giving rise to a European ‗little divergence‘. The contours of this

prosperous North Sea area are at present more difficult to sketch. Surely the Holland and

England heartlands comprised the main engines of growth, but just how far did this acceleration

spread? The eastern part of the Dutch Republic caught up during the seventeenth century14, but

how did the Rhineland or the late medieval forerunners in Flanders, Brabant or northern France

compare to the ‗Dutch miracle‘? Comprehensive national (or regional) accounts for the regions

immediately surrounding the North Sea area are at this time absent; therefore it is useful to bring

to light a different approach. Figure 1 summarizes the main conclusions of the GDP studies and

the results of my own work on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch. The actual

calculations of the average income in ‗s-Hertogenbosch cannot be discussed here, an overview of

8 A recent review gives Van den Bergh, ―The GDP paradox‖. 9 Angeles, ―GDP per capita or real wages?‖. 10 Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality; Allen, ―Engels‘ pause‖. 11 de Vries, The industrious revolution; Allen and Weisdorf, ―Was there an ‗industrious revolution‘‖. 12 See for a recent state of affairs van Zanden, The long road. 13 Allen, ―The great divergence‖. 14 de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy.

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the sources and methodology is provided in the following section and in more detail in the

Appendix.

Figure 1. Trends in GDP per capita and real wages per capita, 1500-165015

Let us first focus on the GDP estimates. The story of the Northern Netherlands is by now well-

known and is of less concern here.16 After a period of stagnation in the first half of the sixteenth

century, between 1570 and 1650 GDP per capita increased with a massive 70%. The intensity of

this economic acceleration remains unprecedented in early modern history. In addition, the

stabilisation at a very high level in the ensuing centuries (not reported here) is equally unique, if

not uncontested, in comparative perspective. It could be argued that precisely in the sustainability

of welfare gains realized in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch Republic lies the

proof of the ‗modern‘ character of its economy.17

The contrast with the Southern Netherlands is immediately apparent. During the first half of the

sixteenth century output and incomes rose strongly, especially for pre-industrial standards. In ‗s-

Hertogenbosch per capita incomes rose from 25 fl. in 1502/3 via 30 fl. in 1512/3 to 44 fl. in

1552/3 (see Appendix for the details of the underlying calculations). In constant prices and

deflated to Bob Allen‘s welfare ratios (see below), this spell of expansion translates in a more

modest growth in average income of roughly 1 welfare ratio (WR1) at the onset to WR1.2 by the

15 All figures for ‘s-Hertogenbosch from research in the City Archives, Old Archives (Stadsarchief, Oud archief), numbers 1354-1520 (city accounts 1496-1669) and 2134 (verpondingen 1636 and 1656); real wages from Allen, ―The great divergence‖; and GDP figures from Blomme and Van der Wee, ―The Belgian economy‖; and van Zanden, The long road. 16 A detailed examination in de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy. 17 Ibid.; van Zanden, ―The ‗revolt of the early modernists‘‖.

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GDP 'Belgium' (1994)

GDP 's-Hertogenbosch

Real wage Amsterdam

Real wage Antwerp

Real wage 's-Hertogenbosch

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middle of the sixteenth century. Given the economic vagaries of the Antwerp world market and

the surrounding regions dominated by the metropolis, the peak of this trend was presumably

reached in the 1530s.18 At this point aggregate incomes in ‗s-Hertogenbosch trumped Dutch per

capita income with some 15% to 20%.19 As ‗s-Hertogenbosch scored average at best in the urban

hierarchy of the Southern Netherlands, there is little doubt that by mid-century the urban centres

of the Southern Netherlands boosted higher incomes than their northern counterparts. In the

second half of the long sixteenth century the fortunes of North and South drastically reversed.

Estimated incomes in the Southern Netherlands stagnated and contracted20: the scathing passage

of the Spanish troops, the fall of Antwerp in 1585 and the continuous turbulence on the

international scene ravaged the region‘s economic structures and interrupted international and

regional trade flows. The beginning of the Eighty Years‘ War (1568-1648) sounded the death

bells of the ‗golden age‘ of Antwerp and the surrounding regions in the duchy of Brabant.

Especially in the last quarter of the sixteenth century massive depopulation and interrupted trade

networks eroded the human and physical capital base of the earlier expansion. The gains realized

in this period, especially during the two phases of acceleration in the first and second quarter of

the century, were annulled as the long sixteenth century progressed, as Malthusian theory would

predict.21 In this way the golden age of the Southern Netherlands was a relatively common pre-

industrial ‗efflorescence‘.22 However, unlike many German towns that were structurally crippled

and impoverished by the Eighty Years‘ War23, the urban economy of ‗s-Hertogenbosch – and

presumably the Southern Netherland as a whole24 – restored relatively swiftly. Population levels

crawled back to their pre-war levels, and per capita incomes again stabilized at roughly their early

sixteenth-century level.

A first indication of the social consequences of these aggregated economic trajectories can be

found in the real wage curves also plotted in Figure 1. The divergence in GDP per capita and real

wages is readily apparent almost throughout the entire period. Only in the seventeenth-century

Southern Netherlands (of which the S-shaped curve depicted for ‗s-Hertogenbosch is probably a

more realistic representation than the stretched inverted U for ‗Belgium‘) did real wages and

GDP per capita follow the same slowly upward sloping trend. It is no coincidence that this is the

18 Van der Wee, The growth; Van Uytven, ―De triomf van Antwerpen‖; also Blondé, De sociale structuren. 19 Jan Luiten van Zanden estimated the average income in Holland in 1510-4 at 24.6 fl., see van Zanden, ―Taking the measure‖. Recent and of yet unpublished research might reshape the contours of this story, for it has been found that Dutch growth was most outspoken in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, paralleling the Antwerp-led boom in the Southern Netherlands, see van Leeuwen and van Zanden, ―The origins‖. 20 Blomme and Van der Wee, ―The Belgian economy‖. 21 Van der Wee, The growth; Van der Wee, ―Structural changes‖. 22 Goldstone, ―Efflorescences‖. 23 Friedrichs, Urban society. 24 Van der Wee, ―Industrial dynamics‖; Van Uytven, ―What is new‖.

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least dynamic period of the region under study. In the Northern Netherlands, the first half of the

period witnessed stagnant average incomes in the face of declining real wages. In the second half

of the long sixteenth century both series trended upwards, but incomes rose about three times

faster than real wages.25 In the Southern Netherlands the economic acceleration of the sixteenth

century lifted incomes but strongly depressed real wages – the Antwerp figures being the

exception proving the rule.26 This has lead a number of scholars to highlight the adverse social

effects of the ‗golden age‘, specifically for the labouring sorts that are thought to represent the

majority of the urban populaces.27 In any case, from these examples a case can be made that in

early modern Europe labour paid the price of rapid economic development. The study of long-

term income inequality confirms the wider negative social consequences of pre-industrial growth,

as the next section testifies.

III. Income Inequality and Economic Growth

The debate on the social consequence of the long sixteenth century in the Low Countries mirrors

a broader historiographical dispute between pessimist and optimist readings of the social and

economic history of late medieval and early modern Europe.28 Malthusian and Marxist

predictions have led many scholars to emphasise the (all too often alleged) poor living standards

of the multitude and the massive income and wealth inequalities characterising this period. For

the former such a miserable state of affairs was an inherent consequence of the pre-industrial

technological limitations and demographic system, for the latter the further development of

capitalism and proto-industry held promises of progress for anyone but the labouring poor who

saw their numbers swell continuously. Their arguments found a firm footing in the evidence

presented in the previous section.29 Those at the other side of the fence have found much

inspiration in Adam Smith‘s intellectual legacy of market-driven specialisation and

commercialisation, and more recent insights from endogenous growth theory on human capital

accumulation, thereby stressing the important gains in agricultural (and urban based) productivity

throughout this period. In the specific case of the (long) sixteenth-century Southern Netherlands,

declining real wages comprise a fool-proof sign of increasing poverty in the pessimist view, but a

precursor of significant productivity and real income gains for the optimists.

25 Noordegraaf and van Zanden, ―Early modern economic growth‖; van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖. 26 Scholliers, ―Le pouvour d‘achat‖; Verlinden, Craeybeckx, and Scholliers, ―Price and wage movements‖; Van Uytven, ―In de schaduw‖; Van Uytven, ―Sociaal-economische evoluties‖. 27 Scholliers, Loonarbeid en honger; Lis and Soly, Poverty and capitalism; Vandenbroeke, Sociale geschiedenis; Scholliers and Vandenbroeke, ―Structuren‖. 28 A summary in van Zanden, ―Een debat‖. 29 Next to the references in the previous note, see for example Clark, A farewell to alms.

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At first sight, the general income estimates presented in the previous sections support the latter

view since income per capita indeed rose during the first half of the sixteenth century, although it

did stagnate and contract the following decades. Such aggregate figures are insufficient to credit

or discredit either of these major interpretations however, for shifts in income per capita do not

necessarily reflect changes felt by the majority of the population. The same is true for the real

wage. Although habitually used to asses living standards of the ‗working class‘ or ‗the population

at large‘30, a recent study found that the income trajectories of the unskilled and skilled labourers

earning these wages were not necessarily representative for other income brackets.31 The relative

and absolute living standards of all income brackets of ‗s-Hertogenbosch are therefore of

relevance in assessing in which story this urban history fits best. Not only is the connection

between the poorer sorts and subsistence of interest, also the purchasing power of the middling

groups of small producers, shop-keepers and so forth, has a profound relevance in fuelling

‗home-spun‘ growth and the urban economy in general.

Figure 1 already gives a first indication of trends in economic inequality: both during the early

sixteenth-century Southern boom and during the seventeenth-century Northern golden age

average incomes and real wages tracked divergent paths. In the Southern Netherlands real wages

plummeted between 1500 and 1560 (only in Antwerp did real wages more or less stand their

ground) while total and average incomes soared; in the Dutch Republic average incomes

increased at roughly triple the pace of the real wage.32 This falls in line with more general findings

on the history of early modern Europe, where in other situations economic growth progressed

hand in glove with a divergence in GDP per capita and real wages.33

Also on the aggregate level economic expansion had adverse social effects as income inequality

levels were positively correlated with economic growth. Jan Luiten van Zanden found that

especially in the centres of booming commercial capitalism economic growth inexorably

stretched society-wide income differentials, leading him to conjecture a ‗super Kuznets curve‘ of

pre-industrial economic growth coupled to rising income inequality.34 Guido Alfani recently

complemented this perspective with data from early modern Italy, where economic stagnation

and contraction were associated with (mildly) rising wealth inequality.35 Alfani rightly

distinguished between wealth and income (proxied by house rent), which however leaves open

30 See for example Allen, Bengtsson, and Dribe, ―Introduction‖. 31 Blondé and Hanus, ―Beyond building craftsmen‖. 32 Van der Wee, The growth; Noordegraaf and van Zanden, ―Early modern economic growth‖; van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖. 33 Angeles, ―GDP per capita or real wages?‖; a similar trend was found in industrialising England, see Allen, ―Engels‘ pause‖. 34 van Zanden, ―Tracing the beginning‖; Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality. 35 Alfani, ―Wealth inequalities‖.

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the question whether the example of Italy, grounded in wealth data, can in effect contradict the

super Kuznets hypothesis focussed on income.36

In any case, the positive ‗Kuznets‘ relationship is confirmed for the sample of cities in the

Northern and Southern Netherlands summarized in Figure 2.37 Especially from the 1550s

onwards, it is obvious how in the North booming income levels (see Figure 1) progressed hand

in glove with rising inequality, while in the South stagnating or contracting average incomes (from

the second half of the sixteenth century onwards) were associated with stagnating and indeed

declining inequality figures. Contrast Alkmaar in Holland with ‗s-Hertogenbosch in Brabant.

Even though around 1750 both cities boasted a similar inequality in house rent distribution (Gini

coefficient of .43-.45), some 200 years earlier inequality in the latter had been 50% higher than in

the former (Gini‘s or respectively .52 and .34).

Figure 2. House rent inequalities in the Low Countries, 1500-175038

It is important to note that early modern inequality has a distinct negative connotation, following

from the implicit assumption that rising inequality is associated with rising poverty or at the very

least adverse social effects for the poorer income brackets. The methodology of calculating pre-

36 See the original formulation in Kuznets, ―Economic growth‖; and critical appraisals in Piketty, ―The Kuznets‘ curve‖; Korzeniewicz and Moran, ―Theorizing the relationship‖. 37 For ‗s-Hertogenbosch a broad range of other inequality measures was computed, including a number of general entropy indices (Theil, Atkinson, etc.). Since these measures revealed the same trends, and the Gini coefficient is most often used in the historical literature, I restrict the discussion here to the Gini coefficient that has the merit of calculative simplicity and interpretative comparability. A more detailed examination can be found in Hanus, ―Affluence and inequality‖, chapter 4; on theory and methods of inequality measurement, see for example Cowell, Measuring inequality. 38 Data from ‘s-Hertogenbosch and Mechelen were collected from the local archives. For Mechelen from the City Archives, Old Archives (Stadsarchief, Oud archief), series K. Impots Maisons, numbers I (1544), III (1579), IV (1599) and VI (1643) and XIV (1746). For ‘s-Hertogenbosch see Figure 1. Data from Alkmaar in van den Berg and van Zanden, ―Vier eeuwen welstandsongelijkheid‖; from Leiden in Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality.

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industrial inequality figures should caution us for too hasty conclusions. While present-day

economists usually possess national or at least nationally representative figures to draw

conclusions from, early modern ‗national‘ inequality indices are mostly derived from extrapolating

urban figures, or in rare occasions from weighing urban and rural data.39 The total national

distribution is beyond reach, and this may seriously affect the interpretation of the reconstructed

inequality indices as measures of national or regional welfare. Recently Edward Glaeser reminded

social scientists that ―cities aren‘t full of poor people because cities make people poor, but

because cities attract poor people with the prospect of improving their lot in life‖.40 Thus, the

rising inequality levels in the Dutch cities of the seventeenth and eighteenth century were a

testimony of urban success first and foremost: by attracting rich and (presumably especially) poor

migrants population growth inevitably pushed up inequality levels. The compositional effect of

large groups moving from the ‗equal in poverty‘ countryside to the ‗unequal affluent‘ cities largely

explains the rise in reported inequality without necessarily affecting actual inequality rates. There

is clearly much to be gained from fully incorporating migration and demography into any

comprehensive study of inequality.41 That being said, the opposite case of declining inequality is

not as straightforward as it might seem either. Especially since this analysis is largely based on

house rent information (and not direct income data as presented in the following section), a

decline in house rent inequality could be the result of increased poverty and decreased riches as

the latter ensures a lower demand for high-end residences and the former entices a higher

demand for lower-end housing. The reduced inequality in the Southern Netherlands may very

well be the result of an impoverished urban community while the increasing inequality in the

North, spurred by migration, may have in actual fact improved everyone‘s lot, even for those at

the lower reaches of the (ever more) unequal distribution. This discussion draws attention to the

writings of the philosopher John Rawls, who as a policy goal downplayed aggregate inequality

figures in favour of absolute welfare (income) at the bottom-end of the distribution. In Rawls‘

normative perspective, a distribution leaving the poorest in a better condition is always preferred,

even if this comes at the cost of higher inequality.42 This insight is of crucial importance for the

story of early modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch, as the following section demonstrates.

39 As in Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality. 40 Glaeser, Triumph of the city, 70. 41 Williamson, ―Growth‖. 42 Rawls, A theory of justice.

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IV. From Relative to Absolute Living Standards

The advantage of actual (diversified) living standards over relative inequality measures rests in

their palpable interpretation. A change in inequality levels, as we saw above, can be the result of

many, sometimes diverging welfare scenarios. One way to make the analysis of inequality

sensitive to distributional shifts is by comparing different statistical measures of inequality, such

as the Gini, Theil or Atkinson indices, the top 1% or 10% shares, the log of variances, P90/P10

ratios and so forth. Another approach would be to abandon statistical summary measures in

favour of a more comprehensive study that takes into account and indeed takes as its starting

point the differences between various income brackets.43 Although this could be a problematic

perspective for large-scale or broad comparative studies, for the detailed comparison of a small

number of income distributions intended here, I believe this approach to be the more valuable.

As an added and very valuable bonus, secular trends in income poverty come within reach.

In order to arrive at absolute living standards, three methodological hurdles had to be taken in

succession. A first step consisted of establishing that the sixteenth-century fiscal documents of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch, the so-called gemene zettingen or general levies, in effect taxed the income of all

urban households. This step has been documented in detail elsewhere, a summary of the main

arguments can be found in the Appendix.44 In short, it could be established that the levies of

1502/3, 1505/6, 1512/3, 1552/3 and 1557/8 taxed household income or came as close as

possible in this pre-statistical context. Secondly, since this type of direct income taxes only

survived for the sixteenth century, the analysis had to be supplemented by making use of a range

of house rent taxes for the years 1505/6, 1547/8 and 1636. As noted above most studies of

income inequality are actually grounded in house rent distributions which are considered useful

and fairly readily available proxies for income distributions. More accurately, it is habitually

accepted that on the individual and household level house rent and income are closely related,

whereby ―economists have noted that the income elasticity of housing is near enough unity that

one could use the value of occupied housing as an index of permanent income‖.45 The Appendix

documents how in this paper house rent was transformed into income estimates. In brief, the

availability of all but overlapping income and house rent levies (1505/6 and 1506/746) allowed the

calculation of the actual income elasticity of house rent in this year.47 From this calculation

43 Jenkins and Van Kerm, ―The measurement‖. 44 Also see Blondé and Hanus, ―Beyond building craftsmen‖; Hanus, ―Affluence and inequality‖. 45 Hoffman e.a., ―Sketching the rise‖, 160. 46 An additional income tax levied in 1508 (otherwise not used here) fully confirmed the validity of this approach. 47 Regression of estimated income (in fl., Y) on annual house rent (in fl., R) lead to the equation R = 0.39 * Y0.68, or an income elasticity of house rent of 0.68. As can be learned in more detail in the Appendix, for the house rent levy of 1547 and the income tax of 1552 a similar exercise was made. Here the resulting regression equals R = 0.86 *

[19]

income estimates were derived for 1636, although error margins have swollen accordingly,

especially on the individual household level.

A third and final step consisted of deflating the nominal income data for inflation. To this end I

made use of a consumer price index (CPI) modelled in the image of (and mostly constructed

making use of) the CPIs developed by Bob Allen.48 As such, the CPI is constructed in a way that

it provides a minimal intake of calories, sufficient volumes of clothing, housing, etc., necessary

for survival.49 Many will disagree with this absolutist approach, pointing at the numerous

difficulties intricate to estimating an absolute poverty line – let alone a poverty line applicable to

such a very wide chronological and geographical scope as Allen proposes.50 Many of these

objections are valid, but should not distract our attention from the fact that in market economies

purchasing power and income prospects did comprise a major – and decisive, I would add –

influence on all sorts of critical life changes. Despite recognising the significance of exclusive and

inclusive dynamics in the social, cultural or political sphere, for one, I do believe in the added

value of a materialistic approach that focuses first and foremost on material living standards

defined in terms of purchasing power. As a corollary, poverty is defined in terms of earning

insufficient income to pay for a minimal basket of consumables; welfare is expressed in the

quantitative relationship between earned income and a number of different baskets of

consumables capturing diverging consumer opportunities. One should not confuse this choice

with ontological reductionism or narrow Marxist materialism; rather it is first and foremost a

choice informed by heuristic constraints. Given the problematic nature of fully or even partially

understanding life‘s multidimensionality for present day scholars, the reader can surely appreciate

the complexity of going beyond the socioeconomic ‗base‘ and addressing the influences, causes

and effects of all or even a small number of other dimensions in this particular case study.51 That

being said, I will first briefly comment on the mathematics underpinning Table 1 before

discussing the results of this exercise, starting at the bottom of the distribution.

Bob Allen constructed his original baskets of consumables in the late 1990s, but came to realise

in recent years that this basket was actually too expensive for ordinary workers in most parts of

Y0.57, or a lower elasticity of 0.57. The consequences of this finding are discussed in the Appendix. For reasons of completeness both estimators are put to use in Table 1, but given the more problematic chronological constellation of the latter elasticity (and the substantial income mobility characterising sixteenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch, see Hanus, ―Income mobility‖.), in the analysis the former equation is preferred as principal estimator. 48 In particular I combined scarcely available information from the city archives of ‘s-Hertogenbosch with more elaborate price data from Antwerp, Amsterdam and Utrecht found in Posthumus, Nederlandse prijsgeschiedenis; Munro, ―Builders‘ wages‖; Van der Wee, ―Prijzen en lonen‖; Munro, ―Money‖; van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖; van Zanden, ―Wages‖. 49 Allen, ―The great divergence‖; Allen, The British Industrial Revolution. 50 See for example the multidimensionalist critique in the social sciences in Nolan and Whelan, ―On the multidimensionality‖; McGillivray and Shorrocks, ―Inequality‖. 51 Also see Hanus, ―Taxes‖.

[20]

late medieval and early modern (Southern and Eastern) Europe and Asia. He therefore assembled

a second basket at bare bones subsistence level containing the absolute minimum of calories and

proteins necessary for survival, which incorporated the cheapest goods possible to reach this

minimum level. The original basket was reframed the ‗respectable‘ basket, based on ideas of what

scattered early modern contemporaries considered respectable consumption for labourers. In

other words, it could be argued that the original respectable basket comprises a relative poverty

line, whereas the subsistence basket delineates absolute and life-endangering poverty. The main

differences between both baskets are in the total amount of calories and proteins that each basket

contains and in the choice of the diet. Subsistence baskets amount to some 1,900 calories per day

and the cheapest available cereal, the respectable baskets provides 2,500 calories, the ‗better‘

cereal foodstuff and relatively large portions of meat, cheese and beer.52

Table 1. Absolute income distributions in 's-Hertogenbosch

expressed in welfare ratios, 1502-163653

1502/3 1512/3 1552/3 1636

Decile averages Welfare ratio (RR)

D1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.3

D2 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.5

D3 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.8

D4 0.9 1.0 0.9 1.2

D5 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.8

D6 2.3 2.3 2.1 2.6

D7 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6

D8 5.9 6.0 5.9 5.6

D9 10.9 11.7 11.8 13.5

D10 46.9 46.1 51.3 45.2

Gini coefficient 0.75 0.76 0.76 0.71

Table 1 expresses the living standards of the population of ‗s-Hertogenbosch at various income

levels in relation to the number of respectable baskets that particular income could buy. I use

Allen‘s older terminology of ‗welfare ratios‘ which is equivalent to his respectable baskets. The

interpretation of the resulting figures is that a welfare ratio (WR) of 1 implies that the earned

52 Some of the main differences between the respectable (R) and subsistence (S) basket in quantities per year: bread: 234 kg (R) versus 155 kg of oats (S); beans and peas: 52 kg (R) – 20 kg (S); meat: 26 kg (R) – 5 kg (S); butter: 5.2 kg (R) – 3 kg (S, plus oil); cheese: 5.2 kg (R) – none (S); soap: 2.6 kg (R) – 1.3 kg (S); fuel: 5 million BTU (R) – 2 million BTU (S). More details are given in Allen, The British Industrial Revolution, 35-37. It should be stressed that this is an ‗English‘ example. Allen took great care to reconstruct differing baskets for different regions, also within Europe. 53 Sources: see Figure 1, also Allen, The British Industrial Revolution.

[21]

income sufficed to ‗respectably‘ feed, shelter and clothe a household counting two adults and two

children. A welfare ratio of 0.6-0.7, for example, should allow a respectable lifestyle for a smaller

family of a childless couple or a single-parent household with one or two children. A one-person

household could survive decently at a welfare ratio of 0.4 or even 0.3, given the diseconomies of

scale for rent and other types of fixed expenditure this situation brings along. On the other hand,

in the early modern Low Countries the subsistence basket cost about one third of the respectable

consumer bundle.54 In other words, a welfare ratio of 0.3 should have sufficed to offer bare

bones food and shelter for a family of four. For singles in early modern Europe, welfare ratios as

low as 0.1 still allowed survival, albeit only just.

With these clarifications in mind, what does Table 1 reveal about the long-term shifts in the living

standards of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch? Did the decline in income

inequality find a reflection in rising purchasing power for the poor, or did all lower brackets

suffer the fate of the shrinking real wage? This question receives a surprising answer. If the

figures reported in Fout! Verwijzingsbron niet gevonden.Table 1 are to be trusted, we can

detect a marked increase in living standards for the lower income brackets. Between 1502/3 and

1552/3, deciles 1, 2, 3 and 4 saw their welfare ratio increase with 40 to 50%, and with 20 to 60%

between 1552 and 1636. These results are potentially in part spurious, given that in 1502/3 and

1512/3 (15%) and 1552 (5%) the number of poor at the bottom tail of the distribution had to be

estimated at a very (and presumably too) low income. Even so, if we were to (wrongly) remove

these added poor, the upward trend is still present. One conclusion stands strong: for the lowest

income ranges of long sixteenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch the trend of declining inequality

established above appears to have been good news. In addition, the plummeting real wage did

not affect the living standards of the poorer sorts as we would have expected.55

This all is not to say that the lowest income brackets were not poor, quite on the contrary. In the

sixteenth century, 40 to 45% of all households earned less than a respectable living for a four-

person household. By the seventeenth century, all things equal, ‗respectable‘ poverty had

decreased to 35% of all households. The long-term decline is more pronounced in terms of

below-subsistence poverty, although it should be taken into account that the effects of the

estimated number of non-taxed poor is larger the closer we get to the bottom of the distribution.

As a consequence, absolute poverty is probably overestimated in 1502/3 and 1552/3. More

importantly, a lack of insight in the composition of these households forecloses confident

statements. Common sense suggests that a part of the poorest households counted less than four

54 Bob Allen has not yet reported the exact figures for his subsistence baskets on the internet. The figures presented here were derived from a yardstick comparison of figures 2.2 and 2.3 in Ibid., 39-40. 55 A more elaborate discussion in Blondé and Hanus, ―Beyond building craftsmen‖.

[22]

members. Historical research has borne out this assumption for a limited number of cases. In

1581 Leiden, for example, the correlation between the rental value of a dwelling and its number

of occupants amounted to an impressive 0.76.56 Elsewhere, similar proportionalities between

neighbourhood or street aggregate wealth and household size have been established. The

significant presence of servants in the better-off households and the tendency to postpone or

altogether forestall (re)marriage in poorer layers of society does much to explain these

differences. In addition, in early modern England and elsewhere, the rich procreated appreciably

more children than the poor.57 We are really interested in adult equivalent living standards,

welfare ratios deflated by household size. This is of specific interest since the European marriage

pattern, thought to capture the demography in urban centres such as early modern ‗s-

Hertogenbosch, assumes an important and socially biased connection between economic trend

and demographical behaviour.58 The following section operationalizes this idea and connects the

evidence of Table 1 to the demographic and relative price histories of early modern Europe.

V. Real Inequality in Early Modern ‘s-Hertogenbosch

The lack of detailed insight in the household composition of the many tax payers of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch can be partially remedied by focussing on the single women and widows marked

as such in the fiscal documents.59 They can lead us to estimates delineating a one-person

household from more complex households, and thus bring us one (small and hypothetical) step

closer to adult equivalent living standards. The basic reasoning is twofold: first, I assume that in

the cases where women were recorded as heads of household, these households were typically

small, often consisting of only one person or a small-scaled composite household. In the 1622

census, for example, we find Jenneke Roosen living in the Katerstraatje with two small children, or

Marij Dircks who co-resided with the Welsh Willemke and their four children. All other female

heads of household in this census were widows mothering a single-parent family.60 Secondly and

more boldly, I suppose an underlying (aggregated) economic logic associated with the income

distribution of single women and widows within the larger society. This connection is apparent in

the disproportionally large numbers of (single) women found in the lower reaches of the various

56 Daelemans, ―Leiden‖. 57 Clark and Hamilton, ―Survival‖; Clark, A farewell to alms; Allen, ―A review‖. 58 See for a recent discussion De Moor and van Zanden, ―Girl power‖. 59 Thanks to Bruno Blondé for suggesting this original line of reasoning; also see Blondé, De sociale structuren; Wall, ―Widows‖. 60 ‗s-Hertogenbosch City Archives, Old Archives, number 3348. Ideally, for this exercise we should separate the widows from the single women. However, the nominal record linkage of the numerous early sixteenth-century levies learned that in many cases someone labelled as widow in one levy was mentioned with her maiden or (more often) late husband‘s name without the prefix ‗widow‘ attached. Since there is no meaningful way to identify widows from single women, I have chosen to group them into one analytical category.

[23]

fiscal documents (see Figure 3). This finding suggests that the households at these fiscal brackets

consisted of but one breadwinner, in many cases a single woman or widow. The 1512/3 general

levy provides a number of illustrative examples such as Thonyske keescoepster (cheese monger),

Lysken die pleeghster (nurse) or Aleijdt die bleijcxster (bleacher) who were all found in the lowest two

deciles. In 1636, among those residing in the poorer dwellings, we come across Judit de craemster

(shopkeeper), Jenneken het vroetwijff (midwife) or Geertgen de appelcoopster (apple monger).

As an experiment, I propose to search for a significant breaking point in the distribution of

women in the tax records that might suggest a similar social and fiscal divide between mostly

single-person (or single-parent) households and those populated by couples sharing the benefits

of income pooling. At the point in the distribution where the share of single women and widows

declines significantly, there we should also locate the shift from mainly singles to mostly couples.

This rather abstract reasoning gains depth and credibility when we examine Figure 3 up close.

First consider the curves for 1502/3 and 1512/3, where it is revealed that the share of women

among the heads of households was rather high in the lowest two deciles, standing at 25-40% of

all tax paying households. This figure contracts as we ascend the fiscal hierarchy, to level off in

decile 5 in 1502/3, in decile 3 in 1512/3 (although in this distribution there is a strong decline in

the upper deciles as well). One could read into these figures that most households situated in the

lowest four deciles in 1502/3 were single-person or single-parent households. Even though it is

impossible to ascertain whether male-headed households were small or large in size, and simple

or complex in composition, it is feasible – I argue – to extrapolate the numbers of (supposedly

single) women marked as household heads to include single men. In other words, based on these

figures I conjecture that among the 40% ‗poorest‘ tax payers, the majority were actually small-

scaled households, more often than not counting only one adult.61 These men and women did

not earn enough to sustain a family. From decile 5 onwards, conversely, we find relatively less

women (and presumably single men) as household heads, which might indicate that this fiscal

position corresponded with an annual income sufficient to marry – and, of course, an income

position often composited of the earnings of both partners (and children).

61 Alternative measures were calculated, but since they yielded similar results I opted for this, in comparison more readily accessible, visualisation. This is true when we divide the income distribution in twenty shares holding 5% of the population (instead of deciles), when we work with absolute instead of relative figures, and when we calculate ‗column shares‘ based on the total of women spread over all deciles instead of ‗row shares‘ based on the share of women per decile. The fiscal distributions were made comparable in terms of untaxed poor as explained before and in the Appendix.

[24]

Figure 3. Share of women and widows in fiscal levies, 1502-163662

The viability of this set of propositions is strengthened by two facts. On the one hand it should

be noted that the threshold identified with this exercise (decile 5 in 1502/3) corresponds very

well with the income estimates presented in Table 1. There it was revealed that in 1502/3 those

households with a conjectured income equal to one welfare ratio (WR1.0, the minimal real

income necessary to respectably support a family of four) were situated round and about

percentile 45. There is, in other words, a very close distributional match between the thresholds

identified as the ‗respectable poverty line‘ – separating incomes that could or could not sustain a

household of four – and the ‗single-person/parent households‘ line‘ – marking the households

most likely to be smaller than usual who could therefore survive respectably with a welfare ratio

below one.

A second argument in favour of this interpretation of Figure 3 stems from comparing the 1502/3

and 1512/3 curves. As can be readily seen, the latter curve is similar to the former, except for the

downward shift for the lower deciles and the upward shift of the middle deciles. There were less

single-person households in 1512/3 in the lower income brackets, but more in the middle and

upper middle reaches. This is in line with what we would expect in a booming economy

characterised by the European marriage pattern. Rising real incomes (see Table 1) presumably led

to increasing numbers of marriage and therefore to less single-person households at the lower

income brackets. Higher up the distribution, conversely, budding real income ensured women

and widows (and widowers?) more agreeable living standards, thereby obviating their economic

62 Sources: see Figure 1.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Shar

e o

f w

om

en

an

d w

ido

ws

Decile (1 = poorest; 10 = richest)

1502/3

1512/3

1552/3

1636

[25]

need for (re)marriage.63 At the onset of the century, the opposite was true when comparably

lower real incomes forced men and women with smaller incomes into celibacy.

In 1552/3 the situation was largely similar, although the total number of women and widows

recorded in the levy was smaller than before. Whether or not this reflected fiscal policy, an

important caveat in this exercise, is unknown. Given that the difference is most outspoken in the

lowest decile and much less visible in other segments of the distribution, this is a likely

hypothesis. In any case, the general trend is similar with deciles 4 and 5 comprising the point of

stabilisation, and therefore the likely line separating mainly single-person or single-parent

households from predominantly more extended household arrangements. Again this fiscal

position corresponds with an estimated welfare ratio of 1.0 at percentile 42. These figures suggest

that mid sixteenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch harboured smaller numbers of single-person and

single-parent households than half a century before, which is given the weakened economic trend

and the according contraction of immigration rates a plausible hypothesis indeed.64

The seventeenth-century figures derived from the 1636 verpondingen, finally, further corroborate

the proposed relationship between income and household formation. The curve‘s course is more

erratic, even though the main thrust is similar to the sixteenth-century evidence. In this respect

the reader should bear in mind that the verpondingen were less complete in terms of taxed

households than the sixteenth-century sources. The names (and social details) of the tenants were

frequently missing, especially in the lower deciles, which will have biased the present results (see

Appendix). Accepting the present results and building on the income estimates above, it would

seem that the higher incomes reported for the lower brackets find a reflection in more complex

households from decile 2 onwards.

We can incorporate these findings into the income estimates discussed in the previous section.

Based on the findings of Figure 3 I propose an aggregate household size for each decile of the

income distribution as reported in Panel A.1 of Table 2. The most important diachronic shift is

found in the lower deciles, of which the average household size is assumed to grow throughout

the long sixteenth century (tentative explanations can be found in the following section).

Connecting these figures to the evidence of Table 1 results in Panel B.2 of Table 2, the family

size equivalent real income at various income brackets. These welfare ratios are not calibrated at a

household counting two adults and two children, but adjusted to the expected family size at each

income bracket. Thus, in 1512 the typical household at decile 5 has an estimated family size of 4.7

persons, which is exactly the number covered by a normal welfare ratio of 1.5. As a result, for

this bracket the adjusted welfare ratio equals 1. In 1552 the households of decile 3 are assumed to

63 van der Heijden, Schmidt, and Wall, ―Broken families‖. 64 See Blondé, De sociale structuren; Schuttelaars, Heren van de raad.

[26]

have 4.1 members, of which only half could be fed by their estimated income. The main

diachronic implications of this correction are found in the bottom deciles of the urban

population. By taking the (suspected) increasing household size of the poorer sorts into account,

their estimated nominal income gains shrink markedly. At the same time the long-term decline in

income inequality is also reduced in size – I will come back to this below.

Poverty was a very real issue in late medieval and early modern towns; institutions for poor relief

were ubiquitous in ‗s-Hertogenbosch and elsewhere in the Low Countries and Europe.65 Yet at

the same time, it is rewarding to look above and beyond the lower income brackets. Poverty was

very real, but so was the prosperity of the middling and upper income segments of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch. Traditional discussions of income and wealth in late medieval and early modern

cities usually focus on either the urban poor or the affluence of the city‘s commercial and political

(bourgeois) elites. The middling layers (in terms of income) are all too easily ignored or implicitly

considered barely better off than the poor. Such a perspective, however, does little justice to the

wide range of income prospects enjoyed by the majority of the urban populace of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch.

In 1552, so Table 1 testifies, households situated in the sixth decile made more than double what

was necessary to uphold a respectable life style; those ranked in the seventh decile earned four

times more; being part of the best-off fifth of town (eighth decile) secured a welfare ratio of five

to six. These ‗upper middling‘ income brackets had improved their purchasing power between

the onset and middle of the sixteenth century. This was even truer for the upper ranks of the top

deciles whose welfare ratios increased by more than 10%. Quite tellingly, the wealthiest urban

households earned enough to each feed, shelter and clothe a family of 200 (WR 50 and above).

The annual revenue of the single household at the absolute pinnacle of the income distribution

could respectably maintain 750 to 900 persons, or almost one in every twenty citizens. Between

the 1550s and the 1630s the bottom 60% of the urban population enjoyed a moderate

improvement in living standards, but for the top 40% this period went hand in glove with slightly

reduced purchasing prospects.

This egalitarian tale is only part of the story, however. The basic if implicit premise of the

previous paragraphs has been one of near fixed consumer preferences and unchanging relative

prices. Both assumptions are demonstrably false. The distinction between the respectable and

subsistence consumer bundles already hinted at the existence of socially diversified consumer

preferences and constraints. Just as in the aggregate someone who is unable to afford respectable

65 A recent summary in van Nederveen Meerkerk and Vermeesch, ―Reforming outdoor relief‖.

[27]

cereals will shift to cheaper alternatives, so will households with more to spare tend to consume

differently. Higher income brackets can choose to purchase superior or different goods, their

welfare will thus depend on a different constellation of prices.66 This idea is all the more relevant

in early modern Europe. Between 1500 and 1800, European prices rose strongly, but not at the

same pace for all types of goods. The prices of bulk goods and other necessities increased faster

than those of industrial products that in turn outpaced luxuries.67

To capture the effects of these socially diverging price trends, I used the price series Herman Van

der Wee collected for early modern Antwerp. He showed that between 1500 and 1600 (nominal)

industrial prices rose with 250%, while in the same period the price of grain increased six fold.

Afterwards, it should be noted, this price divergence slowed down considerably. In the period

1600-25, for example, industrial prices increased (6%) faster than grains‘ prices. The prices of

meat and fish slightly lagged those of cereals, but surely outpaced consumer prices for industrial

goods (see Panel A.3).68 I socially correct consumer baskets by mixing the price trends for meats

and industrial products in a social gradient. The lowest decile is assumed to consume nine shares

of meat, which captures the trend in staples and necessities, and one share of industrial products.

The second decile is thought to consume eight shares of meat and two industrial shares, and so

on. The top decile only purchases industrial products. Since the fourth decile most closely

resembles the typical consumers of the respectable basket, the series are calibrated to this decile.

This analysis is only based on trends, not levels, of different consumer baskets. If left at that, we

would have values of 1 (100%) for all deciles in the base year, thus ignoring the very real absolute

consumer basket differences (as opposed to the relative trend). To counteract this inaccuracy, I

propose to weigh the meat prices half, and the industrial prices double. Alternative weighing

methods did not alter the picture presented below.

The end results of these manipulations can be found in Panel A.2 in Table 2. It clearly shows the

strong impact of the specific price history of early modern Europe. Between 1502 and 1636 the

ratio of the top to the bottom decile consumption baskets declined from 3:1 to 2:1 – in other

words, life had become quite a bit cheaper for the richer sorts, and clearly more expensive for the

poorer households of ‗s-Hertogenbosch (and the Low Countries as a whole). On top of the

strong nominal inflation, in relative terms the better-off households also benefited from socially

biased price movements.

66 We do not even have to make this assumption. As noted by Hoffman et al., even by ascribing to rich and poor identical tastes in the abstract, ―having very different resources means that the same price movements affect their welfare very differently‖, see Hoffman e.a., ―Real inequality‖, 341. 67 Van der Wee, ―Prices and wages‖; and more recently Hoffman e.a., ―Sketching the rise‖; van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖. 68 Van der Wee, ―Prices and wages‖; Munro, ―Builders‘ wages‖.

[28]

Table 2. Real inequality in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, 1500-163669

Panel A. Deflators

Panel A.1. Proposed household size Panel A.2. Proposed consumer price trend

1502 1512 1552 1636 1502 1512 1552 1636

D1 2.1 2.2 2.5 2.4 D1 0.59 0.64 0.69 0.73

D2 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.7 D2 0.73 0.76 0.79 0.82

D3 3.5 3.7 4.1 4.2 D3 0.86 0.88 0.90 0.91

D4 4 4.2 4.5 4.5 D4 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

D5 4.7 4.7 4.8 4.8 D5 1.14 1.12 1.10 1.09

D6 4.8 4.8 4.9 4.9 D6 1.27 1.24 1.21 1.18

D7 4.95 4.95 5 4.95 D7 1.41 1.36 1.31 1.27

D8 5 5 5.1 5.05 D8 1.55 1.48 1.41 1.36

D9 5.1 5.1 5.15 5.1 D9 1.68 1.60 1.52 1.44

D10 5.15 5.15 5.2 5.2 D10 1.82 1.72 1.62 1.53

Panel A.3. Original price series (1502=1.00)

meat 1.00 1.35 2.02 6.55

industrial 1.00 1.11 1.39 3.90

Panel B. Re-estimates absolute income distribution

Panel B.1. Original welfare ratios (see Table 1) Panel B.3. Price equivalent welfare ratios

1502 1512 1552 1636 1502 1512 1552 1636

D1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.3 D1 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.4

D2 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.5 D2 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.6

D3 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.8 D3 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.9

D4 0.9 1.0 0.9 1.2 D4 0.9 1.0 0.9 1.2

D5 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.8 D5 1.4 1.4 1.2 1.7

D6 2.3 2.3 2.1 2.6 D6 1.8 1.8 1.7 2.2

D7 3.6 3.6 3.6 3.6 D7 2.5 2.6 2.8 2.8

D8 5.9 6.0 5.9 5.6 D8 3.8 4.1 4.2 4.1

D9 10.9 11.7 11.8 13.5 D9 6.5 7.3 7.8 9.3

D10 46.9 46.1 51.3 45.2 D10 25.8 26.8 31.7 29.5

Gini 0.75 0.76 0.76 0.71 Gini 0.69 0.69 0.72 0.68

Panel B.2. Family size equivalent welfare ratios Panel B.4. Family size and price equivalent welfare ratios

1502 1512 1552 1636 1502 1512 1552 1636

D1 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.4 D1 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.5

D2 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.4 D2 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.5

D3 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.6 D3 0.5 0.6 0.4 0.7

D4 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.8 D4 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.8

D5 1.0 1.0 0.9 1.2 D5 0.9 0.9 0.8 1.1

D6 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.7 D6 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.4

D7 2.3 2.3 2.3 2.3 D7 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.8

D8 3.7 3.8 3.6 3.5 D8 2.4 2.6 2.6 2.6

D9 6.7 7.2 7.2 8.3 D9 4.0 4.5 4.8 5.8

D10 28.7 28.2 31.1 27.4 D10 15.8 16.4 19.2 17.9

Gini 0.72 0.72 0.75 0.70 Gini 0.64 0.66 0.70 0.65

69 Sources: see Figure 1.

[29]

The main interest of this exercise lays in the macro level story, especially in the question how the

subsequent transformations from nominal to real inequality affect the levels and trends of

inequality in the long run. Figure 4 summarizes the main findings of Table 2 in terms of Gini

coefficients. Let us first consider the levels in inequality, which perhaps surprisingly decline as we

add demographic and price variables to the equation. It should be noted that particularly

regarding the price adjusted inequality levels the weighting scheme has a profound influence. For

example, if we had incorporated only the socially biased relative price trends (as in Panel A.3),

Gini coefficients rise with .06 to .08 points compared to the figures reported in Panels B.3 and

B.4 of Table 2. I choose to integrate differences in price levels, since the logic of the ‗real

inequality‘ argument by Phil Hoffman et al. implies differing consumer practices, presumably

associated with (marginally) diverging utility functions.70 In any case is the original 3:1 price ratio

of richest to poorest consumer basket a conservative estimate.

That being said, we should not underestimate the reduction in inequality levels resulting from the

incorporation of demographic and price data. As seen above, in the early modern Low Countries

(and abroad) household size was positively correlated with income. In this context the

transformation of nominal household inequality to adult equivalent corrected inequality is bound

to depress income differentials. In addition, by accepting that consumption is socially biased as

well, the logical conclusion follows that taking this into account reduces ‗real‘ inequality.

Figure 4. Summary graph: income inequality in 's-Hertogenbosch, 1502-163671

70 Hoffman e.a., ―Real inequality‖. 71 Sources: see Figure 1.

0,6

0,65

0,7

0,75

0,8

1502/3 1512/3 1552/3 1636

Gin

i co

eff

icie

nt

Year

Nominal inequality

Household size adjustedinequality

Price adjustedinequality

Real inequality

[30]

Of more interest than the impact of both transformations on the levels of inequality, however,

are the resulting trends. The original nominal inequality trend revealed a minor increase during

the opening decade of the sixteenth century, followed by long-term stagnation and decline during

the second half of the century (also see Figure 2). By the close of the long sixteenth century,

nominal income inequality was lower than at its onset. Incorporating the social biases in either

household or price composition seriously ruffles the picture. As noted by Hoffman et al. the

specific nature of the sixteenth-century ‗price revolution‘72 pushed up real inequality during the

first half of the sixteenth century. Panel A.3 brings further testimony, for it reveals that between

1512 and 1552, meat (and grain) price rises (+50%) doubled industrial price gains (+25%). In

later years relative prices evolved in closer harmony, for mirroring nominal inequality, over the

long run price-corrected inequality in 1636 was lower than in 1500. The household size

correction brings another twist to the tale. This transformation follows the price adjustment in

revealing a strong increase during the first half of the sixteenth century, but the important fact to

note is that by bringing into play demography, inequality in 1636 appears to have been as high as

it was in the early sixteenth century. Both series combined result in a real inequality trend that is

clearly distinct from the original, nominal inequality time series. Real inequality increased during

the first half of the sixteenth century, quite spectacularly so between 1512 and 1552, and then

decreased until a level (slightly) above the 1500 starting point. The image of long-term stagnation

and decline evoked by the nominal inequality figures fully evaporates in the face of the socially

biased changes in relative prices and demography characteristic of the long sixteenth century.

Between 1500 and 1550 behind a 1% increase in nominal inequality was hidden a real inequality

jump of some 10%.

This finding has significant implications for the study of inequality and welfare in the past. An

immediate question springs from Figures 2 and 4: was the relationship between nominal and real

inequality established for early modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch typical for the Low Countries as a

whole, or did the Northern Netherlands experience a different mix of demographic and price

histories? If the former were true, the reported increases in inequality might seriously

underestimate the extent and upsurge of income and welfare disparity in the Dutch Republic.

Surely the relative prices in Amsterdam, Alkmaar or Leiden evolved largely similar to those in ‗s-

Hertogenbosch or Antwerp – although it should be noted that relative prices in sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century Holland progressed (much) less inegalitarian compared to England and

France.73 A second caveat in transposing these results to the Dutch case comes from the region‘s

72 See for example Goldstone, ―Urbanization and inflation‖; Munro, ―Money‖. 73 Hoffman e.a., ―Sketching the rise‖. Note that we are still sorely lacking in a detailed socially and geographically diversified understanding of late medieval and early modern price history in the Low Countries as a whole.

[31]

strong seventeenth-century population expansion and galloping urbanisation, which pushed up

dramatically the number of immigrants in the cities. Since the rising inequality rates for Holland

and the Northern Netherlands are largely the result of growing urban inequality (as in Figure 2,

more to the point, of growing urban centres associated with higher inequality levels74), it is

reasonable to assume growing numbers of small households in Alkmaar, Amsterdam and so

forth. Add to this the sensible hypothesis that many of these small, often single-person

households were to be found among the lower income brackets, and the result might be an urban

demographic history entirely opposite to that of early modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch. If booming

population and urbanisation figures went hand in glove with shrinking average household sizes

for the lower income brackets, rising nominal inequality might actually have been associated with

declining adult equivalent (real) inequality.

VI. Conclusions: From Nominal to Real Inequality

For many economic and social historians and economists grappling with the topic, nominal

income inequality is not the real point of interest. In fact they try to measure individual,

household or national welfare (utility) and social, regional or international welfare disparities.

Given the enigmatic and elusive character of welfare, income is considered a decent proxy, and

so is income inequality. Important caveats are often listed, targeted at the intricate vortex of

welfare, income, consumption, (household) composition and inequality. In historiography an

important addition to our understanding of inequality in the long run has come from the concept

of ‗real inequality‘ introduced by Philip Hoffman et al. They drew attention to the simple fact that

―the rich, the poor, and the middle-income ranks consume very different bundles of goods and

services‖.75 Since welfare and utility are and were mostly derived from market transactions,

socially biased relative price trends might further exacerbate income disparities. Hoffman et al.

identify population growth as the main driver of biased relative price movements, since ―faster

population growth by itself could have lowered real wages, raised real land rents, raised the price

of staple foods relative to luxuries‖.76 The relationship between population and price dynamics is

indeed relatively strong in the Low Countries, although next to population quantity one should

be equally sensitive to population ‗quality‘ in terms of income and purchasing power. The

booming late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch Republic saw its population numbers

swell more strongly than in England or France, yet prices evolved much more inegalitarian in the

74 Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality. 75 Hoffman e.a., ―Real inequality‖, 322. 76 Ibid., 351.

[32]

latter countries. Did the budding riches in the Dutch Republic ensure a massive demand for

‗luxuries‘, thus keeping staple and luxury prices in closer harmony?

A first innovative contribution of this paper has been to put the predictions of Hoffman et al. to

the test in a particular case study. Unsurprisingly their conclusions are confirmed: the generally

inegalitarian long sixteenth century ensured in ‗s-Hertogenbosch as well that behind stagnant

nominal inequality one could find rising real inequality. This paper has then pushed the analysis

one step further by (tentatively) incorporating household size and demographic history. Given

that household size and income were generally positively correlated in pre-industrial Europe, I

tried to measure the effect of this finding on inequality levels and trends. The impact of this

transformation on the trends of inequality was substantial: as with its price history, integrating the

demographic history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch further widened

real disparities. Especially when discussing inequality in the long run, underlying price and

demographic trends may seriously affect and even contradict nominal inequality levels and

trends.77 This paper can be read, in other words, as a strong plea for thorough social, economic

and historical contextualisation of inequality studies.

In the changing urban economy of early modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch, important economic and

social processes influenced welfare and inequality in unexpected ways. The history of relative

prices, the result of dynamics much wider than the narrow confines of the city walls, reflects

macro-economic developments associated with population size and riches. A more fine-grained

analysis might be able to disentangle the effects of the geographical shifts in aggregate income

documented in Figure 1 on the (relative) price histories of Northern and Southern Netherlands

and their impact on real inequality.78

The same is true for demography and household behaviour, the second important variable in this

study. Here the history of inequality merges with macro-economic, social and migration history. I

suggested that in the Dutch Republic, and likely most if not all other economically booming

regions, the opposite happened from what occurred in seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch.

There the sluggish urban economy had lost much of its appeal for large shares of the migrant

population, who no doubt redirected their efforts to the efflorescent Dutch Republic.79 As a

result the lower income brackets counted less small-scale (assumed young immigrant)

households, and adult equivalent inequality was higher than nominal inequality would suggest.

77 As in Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson, ―Pre-industrial inequality‖. 78 A lot of price data has already been assembled, but this information has not yet been questioned in this way. See for example Posthumus, Nederlandse prijsgeschiedenis; Verlinden and Scholliers, Dokumenten; and also Verlinden, Craeybeckx, and Scholliers, ―Price and wage movements‖. 79 On ‘s-Hertogenbosch van Gurp, ―Bosschenaars‖; Kappelhof, ―Laverend‖; and wider Lucassen, Naar de kusten; Lucassen, ―Mobilization of labour‖; Lucassen and Lucassen, ―The mobility transition‖.

[33]

More vibrant economies, conversely, were magnets for migrants coming from shorter and longer

distances, often labour migrants whose main intention was to earn a substantial income in the

city (in the Dutch Republic Amsterdam most notably) before returning home. They constituted

small households, situated in the lower income reaches, skewing inequality figures when assumed

to represent full-blown households. This scenario is largely conjectural, even though as noted

above in sixteenth-century Leiden correlation between income and household size was strong

enough to seriously disturb any kind of inequality estimate.80

The broadened concept of real inequality thus yields a mixed answer to the question of the social

consequences of economic growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the one hand,

during the phase of efflorescence characterising the (early) sixteenth-century Southern

Netherlands, demographics and price trends collaborated in widening real income differentials in

‗s-Hertogenbosch. After the bubble had burst on the pointy tips of revolt, war and general

economic and social disruption, nominal inequality decreased markedly. However, hand in glove

with the changed nature of the urban economy of ‗s-Hertogenbosch – which had experienced a

functional shift towards a regional market place first and foremost81 – the demographic layout of

the city altered slightly. The available evidence suggests that fewer small-scale households

populated the city, with serious consequences for any analysis of inequality insensitive to

household composition and adult equivalent welfare measures. This finding places the study of

inequality into its proper social context.82

80 Daelemans, ―Leiden‖. 81 For more details, see Hanus, ―Affluence and inequality‖. 82 Kaelble and Thomas, ―Introduction‖.

[34]

VII. Appendix

A series of detailed fiscal registers constitute the quantitative foundation of this paper. Many of

the inferences made in terms of living standards or income inequality derive from accepting a

number of assumptions concerning these sources, assumptions requiring further scrutiny. This

appendix documents the reliability of these fiscal sources by first detailing the fiscal history and

policy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch. Then attention is given to social

representativeness, tax criterion and tax accuracy. The final paragraphs explain how income and

house rent taxes were transformed in real income and inequality estimates.

Fiscal policy in „s-Hertogenbosch

In early modern Europe direct taxation of personal income was rare. The occurrence of wealth

taxes was considerably higher, but even so do we find only in a very limited number of cities (and

even fewer rural centres) detailed, let alone continuous series of wealth taxes. Early modern

exceptions where industrious city governors and their clerks recorded and updated registers of

wealth every few years include Nördlingen in Germany, Ivrea in Italy and Edam in Holland.83

Typically, however, late medieval and early modern city governments only recurred to direct

taxation in times of crisis. In some cases this could lead to an institutionalization of a certain type

of taxation, but most often it did not. In the Low Countries, state formation resulted in an

intensification of the fiscal pressure from above, leading cities to adapt other strategies, mostly

indirect taxes on consumer goods.84 Late medieval and early modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch was no

exception to this general trend. Excise levies on the production, consumption or transport of

beer, wine and a myriad of other products constituted the bulk of the yearly revenue for the city

government.85 Since at least the late fourteenth century, the sale of public annuities secured on

specific urban revenues or later the body of the city comprised a much favoured extraordinary

source of income.86 Within the late fifteenth-century context of comparably high interest rates,

repeated coin manipulations, the incessant fiscal pressure from the consecutive Burgundian lords

and the ongoing (and expensive) warmongery with the neighbouring county of Guelders, the

public debt of ‗s-Hertogenbosch and many other cities in the Low Countries had spiralled out of

control by the 1490s. At that time the annual interest payments ate up more than the excise

duties delivered. Cutting a long story short, in 1494 Duke Philip the Fair intervened in the fiscal

83 Friedrichs, Urban society; van den Berg and van Zanden, ―Vier eeuwen welstandsongelijkheid‖; De Moor, van Zanden, and Zuijderduijn, ―Micro-credit‖; Alfani, ―Wealth inequalities‖. 84 de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy. 85 Details in Jacobs, Justitie en politie; Kuijer, ‟s-Hertogenbosch; Hanus, Tussen stad en eigen gewin. 86 A recent summary in Zuijderduijn, Medieval capital markets.

[35]

policies of the cities of the Low Countries and installed committees to clean up the urban

finances and especially to control and reduce the towering debts.87

The committee of ‗s-Hertogenbosch executed two main policy choices: firstly, no more annuities

were sold, at least until 1510 when the power and authority of this committee started to wane.

Secondly, in order to reduce the debts and continue to respond to the fiscal demands of the (by

then) Habsburg lords, a series of direct taxes were levied between 1497 and 1512, the so-called

gemene zettingen. Thirteen rounds of direct taxation have survived, levied in 1497/8, 1500/1,

1501/2 (two levies), 1502/3, 1503/4, 1504/5 (two levies), 1505/6, 1506/7, 1507/8, 1511/2 and

1512/3.

By the 1540s history had repeated itself. Expensive combat with Guelders and continuous

annuity sales to meet the rising imperial demands of Charles V made public debt soar as it had

half a century before. Presumably under pressure of the acting governor Maria of Hungary, the

city government reduced its yearly annuity sales, and issued a house rent levy in 1547/8 followed

by two general levies in 1552/3 and 1557/8. The latter levy comprises the last round of direct

taxation for sixteenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch. In 1578 and 1586 the city government executed

(forced) loans from their citizens, but these measures were of a quite different order and left no

sources useable for the purposes of this paper.

The seventeenth century offers a different picture. Although the fiscal and political autonomy of

the city government remained largely unchanged after the Dutch conquest of 1629, for our

purposes an interesting change did occur.88 This change was not situated on the level of the city

government itself: in the seventeenth century the structure of the annual urban revenues and the

public debt management remained very similar to the sixteenth-century situation. Rather, the

regional government of the Generality of States-Brabant installed many of the levies initiated by

the ‗national‘ government of the Dutch Republic in previous years. The gemene middelen, a series of

production and consumption taxes, and the verpondingen, an annual house rent levy, were

transferred from Holland to the other provinces of the Dutch Republic. In ‗s-Hertogenbosch

reliable verpondingen updates (for the tax base was not re-assessed each year) survive for 1636 and

1656.

In summary, the fiscal archive of ‗s-Hertogenbosch consists of two distinct sets of archive

makers. Firstly, although in all likelihood pressured by the central government, the city governors

levied a number of gemene zettingen during the sixteenth century. Bruno Blondé has stressed that

this occurred during a period of crisis, as in most other cities in the Low Countries between the

87 van der Heijden, Geldschieters van de stad; Hanus, Tussen stad en eigen gewin; Ryckbosch, Tussen Gavere en Cadzand; Zuijderduijn, Medieval capital markets. 88 Beerman, Stad en Meierij; Kappelhof, ―Laverend‖; ‘t Hart and van der Heijden, ―Het geld van de stad‖.

[36]

fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. In his opinion (thereby following Wim Blockmans, among

others), this specific historical context makes the fiscal registers suspect for the study of ‗normal‘

social and economic variables.89 I am not so sure, since this conjecture presupposes an all too

narrow connection between urban finances and urban economy. The levying of the gemene

zettingen (both at the onset and middle of the century) was a response to the major difficulties the

urban treasury faced. These were in turn the consequence of a complex set of factors, of which a

possible decline of the urban economy was but of minor significance. Indeed, as Figure 1

testifies, the first decade of the sixteenth century was above all a period of vigorous economic

expansion. Extraordinary fiscal measures executed by the urban government could go together

with a severe economic, social and/or demographic crisis, but this relationship was far from

written in stone. Taxes levied by the central government constituted the second leg of the fiscal

archive of ‗s-Hertogenbosch. These were often connected to political and/or economic troubles

on the ‗national‘ level, and not necessarily related to real facts on the local level.

Who was taxed?

Table A.1 summarizes the main characteristics of the fiscal registers of early modern ‗s-

Hertogenbosch. Usually some 3,000 to 3,500 people were taxed. My working hypothesis is that

excluding the destitute, nobility and clergy, the entire population was taxed on a proportional

basis. As regards to the seventeenth-century verpondingen, the situation is clear. All houses and

dwellings in the city were recorded and taxed, including religious abodes and military barracks. In

1552/3 and 1557/8, on the other hand, hundreds of people were labelled pauper or too poor to

contribute, but registered nonetheless as ‗fiscal poor‘. Detailed research into the city‘s poor relief

records (of the blokken) revealed, however, that a large number of supported poor were not listed

in these fiscal registers. Whether they were in effect not taxed or alternatively lived in with

someone else who was, remains unclear from this exercise.90 In 1552/3 9% of all households

recorded were labelled poor although in some cases the register indicated small alleys where an

unaccounted number of untaxed poor dwelled. In 1557/8 this number had risen to 20%. With

the exception of the few alleys just referred to, I contend that in 1552/3 and 1557/8 only very

few households in ‗s-Hertogenbosch were not recorded in the general levies.

89 Blondé, De sociale structuren, 16-17; also see Blockmans, ―Sociale stratificatie‖. 90 Blondé, De sociale structuren, 33-36.

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Table A.1. Statistical description of the fiscal levies of 's-Hertogenbosch, 1497-1656 (all

figures are intra muros)91

Code Year (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

I 1497/8 1,754 1,945 1.1 0.6 12 75 (incomplete)

II 1500/1 472 2,645 5.6 3 40 105 condition, etc. (incomplete)

III 1501/2a 2,687 8,249 3.1 1 100 299 2

IV 1501/2b 2,619 3,933 1.5 0.7 34 240 1

V 1502/3 2,978 5,149 1.7 0.6 44 222 1

VI 1503/4 3,029 5,088 1.7 0.6 44 191 1

VII 1504/5a 2,116 2,246 1.1 0.4 22 167 0.5

VIII 1504/5b 2,663 8,795 3.3 1 50 367 2

IX 1505/6 2,749 2,744 1.0 0.7 12 199 10% house rent

X 1506/7 2,742 8,903 3.2 1 40 215 2

XI 1507/8 2,319 2,132 0.9 0.3 10 154 0.5

XII 1511/2 2,905 5,207 1.8 0.6 50 304 condition, etc. 1

XIII 1512/3 2,838 9,800 3.5 1 100 400 condition, etc. 2

XIV 1547/8 2,977 2,366 0.8 0.6 5 175 6.7% house rent

XV 1552/3 3,593 19,176 5.3 2 200 130 10% income

XVI 1557/8 3,260 8,058 2.5 1 130 168 5% income + beer

XVII 1569 871 2,206 2.5 1.6 20 73 10% house rent (incomplete)

XVIII 1578 834 11,106 13.3 11 41 19 forced loan

XIX 1586 3,231 3,211 1.0 2 3 14 loan

XX 1636 3,115 189,030 60 40 596 131 12.5% house rent

XI 1656 3,225 161,851 50 34 595 119 12.5% house rent

Key: (1) Total number of tax payers (2) Total amount collected (in guilders) (3) Average tax paid (in guilders) (4) Median tax paid (in guilders) (5) Maximum - minimum tax paid (in

guilders) (6) Number of different values observed (7) Type of levy (according to sources) (8) Standardized contribution factor

In any case, the early sixteenth-century tax collectors and administrators did not record the names

of those not required to pay the taxes. Previously I developed the hypothesis that with regards to

the subsequent general levies between 1497 and 1512, the number of taxed households was

determined by the height of the tax.92 Based on parameters such as the total, average and

disaggregated tax contributions as well as extended nominal record linkage (see below), it is

possible to distinguish between three different levels of taxation. Thus, in 1503/4 (with a

standardized contribution factor 1, see Table A.1), the tax payers had to contribute double the

amount they were due in the first levy of 1504/5a (contribution factor 0.5), but only half of what

was collected in 1504/5b (contribution factor 2). Especially in the rounds with the lowest level of

taxation (0.5), the smallest numbers of tax payers were recorded. If we accept that the taxes were

91 Sources: City Archives ‗s-Hertogenbosch, Old Archives (Oud Archief), city accounts, numbers 1358 (1497/8) - 1408 (1556/7), Archives Council of State, number 2134 (verpondingen). 92 Hanus, Tussen stad en eigen gewin.

[38]

levied on income (which will be documented below), it could be conjectured that the city

government adapted the level of ‗social inclusiveness‘ of its taxes based on the expected returns: a

standardized contribution factor of 0.5 implied a contribution too small to be meaningful for

some of the poorer households, therefore they enjoyed exemption in those years. This is not to

say that in the other years all households were taxed. Based on an extrapolation of the detailed

information of the hearth enumerations of 1496 and 1526 (organised by the central government),

Bruno Blondé convincingly demonstrated that in most of the general levies of 1497-1512 round

and about 15% of the expected number of households were not taxed. This figure corresponds

to the number of fiscal poor recorded in the hearth enumerations.93 I would add to this working

hypothesis that in 1504/5a and 1507/8 (the years with standardized contribution factor 0.5),

another 10 to 15% of all households was cleared from contributing.

The situation of the house rent levies is slightly different. On the one hand, it would appear that

in 1505/6 and 1547/8 largely identical fiscal policies were developed regarding the poor. As can

be learned from Table A.1, in 1505/6 a similar number of households were taxed than in the

general levies before and after. This implies that roughly 15% of the taxable population did not

contribute. In 1547/8 the same scenario was followed as presumably about 20% of the houses

were not included in the levy.94 In the seventeenth-century verpondingen, on the other hand, all

urban houses, no matter how meagre, were taxed. The implication of this pattern is clear: if the

fiscal order came directly from the central government, the entire populace was to be taxed. If

the city government decreed the tax levy, a more lenient attitude towards the city‘s poor was

adopted.

In summary, it were the households of ‗s-Hertogenbosch who paid the taxes, even though in case

of the house rent levies they were not the taxable asset themselves. An important caveat rests in

the observation that only very rarely more than one household was taxed per house. I believe this

to reflect both historical reality and fiscal policy. On the one hand, it has been documented that

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch counted comparatively small numbers of

multi-household abodes, probably less than 5% of all houses.95 Some of the large houses

surrounding the market square had inhabited cellars, which was noted in 1553 and 1569, but

these numbers were small as most dwellings in ‗s-Hertogenbosch were modest in size. The fiscal-

political reason is connected to high turn-over in the occupancy of low-value housing.96 It could

be argued that the city‘s taxation was first and foremost aimed at its citizens, the respectable

households with burghership rights, and the non-burgher city dwellers who resided within the

93 Blondé, De sociale structuren, 33-34; Blockmans and Prevenier, ―Openbare armenzorg‖. 94 van de Laar, ―De bevolking‖; Blondé, De sociale structuren. 95 Cuvelier, Les dénombrements; Blockmans and Prevenier, ―Openbare armenzorg‖; Dambruyne, Mensen en centen. 96 See Hanus, ―Income mobility‖.

[39]

city walls for a prolonged period of time. Temporary inhabitants and those who did not

constitute a ‗proper‘ household and often resided in small chambers or cellars did not fall within

this category.97 They were therefore of less interest for fiscal purposes, not in the least for their

typically modest means.

Be that as it may, the tax registers of ‗s-Hertogenbosch are clearly comprehensive fiscal sources.

Nobles and clergymen were not taxed in most occasions, but their small numbers render this

problem obsolete for the present study. Large segments of the city‘s poor were exempted from

taxation as well, although supplementary sources allow me to estimate their numbers in sufficient

detail.

What was taxed?

Close to all households of ‘s-Hertogenbosch were taxed a number of times during the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries. The reconstruction of the precise criterion of taxation is in some cases

a straightforward, in others a hazardous challenge. The house rent levies of 1505/6, 1547/8,

1569, 1636 and 1656 constitute the easy half. The instructions for these levies specifically stated

which share of the annual house rent had to be collected. In 1505/6, one taxed als vanden dobelen

stuver op eclken gulden, or in other words 10% (see Table A.1). In 1547/8 tenants and proprietors

alike had to contribute eenen braspenninck or 6.67% of the rental value.98 Unsurprisingly, the 1569

10th penny levied 10% of annual rents.99 The instructions for the verpondingen of 1636 and 1656

specified a 12.5% contribution on houses and a 20% tax on mills and (bleachers‘) fields.

The theory of the house rent levies was clear enough, but did the practice live up to this

framework? In those cases where the owner inhabited his or her own house, the taxing

committees had to come up with a reasonable estimate. The instructions to the verpondingen

suggest comparing with neighbouring houses of similar size and quality. There is no way to

ascertain the accuracy of these estimates. The only affirmation of the reliability of the house rents

in the various levies stems from external sources: in all other late medieval and early modern

(urban) house rent levies studied so far, the distribution of values was roughly similar with Gini

coefficients hovering around 0.35-0.45.100 In addition, as can be learned from Table A.1, a wide

range of different tax amounts was collected in the house rent levies which suggests (but does not

prove) a high degree of accuracy.101 Even so, it cannot be denied that in many cases, especially

97 Vos, Burgers, broeders en bazen. 98 Also see Blondé, De sociale structuren, 25. 99 Stabel and Vermeylen, Het fiscale vermogen. 100 Reviews in Boonstra and Mandemakers, ―‗Ieder is het kind zijner eigene werken‘‖; van Zanden, ―Tracing the beginning‖. 101 Compared to, for example, levies in Ghent, Leiden or Alkmaar, see Soltow and van Zanden, Income and wealth inequality.

[40]

when no tenants were involved and by consequence no rental contract on which the assessment

could be based, the actual levy will have been agreed on by means of compromise between the

taxing committees, the proprietor and perhaps even his or her neighbours as well.102 The bias

introduced by such practices is impossible to calculate or negate. On the up side, it is plausible

that any such bias resulted in downward adjustments of the tax contributions. Although this

might have resulted in underestimated inequality figures, it also entails an undervaluation of the

actual levels of affluence in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch.

The sixteenth-century general levies present a harder nut to crack. According to the headings of

the chapters documenting the fiscal levies in the city accounts, the early sixteenth-century taxes

were levied on enigelycken na state, macht, eere ende ryckdomme.103 This stipulation was not noted every

time, but based on the same parameters of total, average and individual contributions, it seems

safe to assume that all general levies of this period were imposed on similar grounds (in particular

numbers II to XIII in Table A.1, excluding the house rent levy IX). It is hard to assess what the

contemporary city clerks had in mind with the quoted phrasing, which translates literally into the

‗condition, power, honour and wealth‘ of the tax payer. The mid-century levies of 1552/3 and

1557/8 are particularly helpful. By virtue of parameters such as total and average contribution as

well as distributional measures such as decile shares and Gini coefficients, a case can be made

that both sets of taxes adopted a very similar criterion of taxation. In 1552/3, the citizens of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch were taxed on their incomenen, neringe, comanscappe, etc, and the same was true in

1557/8 when in addition the possession of barrels of beer was taxed as well (at 4 stuivers per

barrel). In the former year, a contribution of 10% was demanded; in 1557/8 5% was withheld.

The sources nowhere state that this 10th or 20th penny tax was on annual income, although this

has been assumed.104 I believe that the households of ‗s-Hertogenbosch were better-off than

that.105 Also, again primarily based on distributional similarities, I think that the 1552-7 levies

were in many ways similar to the early sixteenth-century general levies. The difference in level of

taxation (10%-5%) surely resembles the different taxation rates established above for the early

sixteenth century, where tax contributions were doubled or halved according to the financial

needs.

This hypothesis (for that it remains by want of solid proof) leaves in the dark what was actually

taxed. Was it ‗simply‘ income from labour, wealth and profit as suggested by the 1552/3

phrasing, or were more abstract variables such as ‗honour‘ and ‗power‘ taken into account as

well? I feel it is safe to assume that both sets of sixteenth-century levies taxed income and

102 Van Uytven, ―Bronnen en methoden‖; Blondé, De sociale structuren, 28-29. 103 Also see Blondé, De sociale structuren; Schuttelaars, Heren van de raad. 104 van de Laar, ―De bevolking‖. 105 This is documented in detail in Blondé and Hanus, ―Beyond building craftsmen‖ also see below.

[41]

financial (as opposed to social or political) capital first and foremost. Most importantly, it was

established for a small number of construction workers employed in city service that their tax

contribution throughout the early sixteenth century closely mirrored their annual earnings.106 A

second item in favour of this interpretation stems from the extensive records of the city‘s public

annuity sales. By nominally linking annuity keepers with the general levy of 1502/3, I could

establish previously that for a number of poor renteniers the public annuity (paid by the urban

treasury) comprised their sole income.107 This proposition gained weight by the fact that the

ratios between the assumed annual incomes of these workmen and annuity keepers and their tax

assessment were identical. The same is true on a more abstract level, namely when comparing

median and average tax contributions of certain occupational groups such as carpenters, masons

and slaters with their daily wages. The same elements are in place for the 1552/3 and 1557/8

levies, and are strengthened by one additional source, the inventory at death of Frans Bogaerts, a

wealthy alderman and rentier who died in 1562. The property revenues that could be computed

from his extensive inventory at death totalled roughly 1,800 fl. per year. If we assume that in

1552/3 and 1557/8 his annual income was of a similar order of magnitude, again the ratios

between estimated incomes and tax contributions correspond perfectly compared to the annual

earnings of construction workers and annuity keepers.

By want of a smoking gun, the assumed relationship between the tax contributions the

households of ‗s-Hertogenbosch paid and their annual income remains hypothetical. The

evidence presented here strengthens me in my belief that the tax assessments if not equalled

income, they at least closely approximated it. Just because close to no written records were

preserved from account books or day-to-day household journals, this does not imply that the

typical early modern city dweller had no conception and indeed detailed knowledge of his or her

financial affairs.

One important dark number remains: even though we have now established (assumed would be

more accurate) that income was taxed, it is unsure whether all forms of income were taxed

equally. In some regions, property revenues were taxed at higher levels than labour earnings, in

others at lower levels. Be that as it may, the contemporary tax collectors, leading figures within

every parish or ward often complemented with government officials, clearly had a very accurate

idea of the taxable assets (income, property, etc.) of their flock.

From tax assessment to real income

106 Ibid. 107 Hanus, Tussen stad en eigen gewin.

[42]

The fiscal archives of ‗s-Hertogenbosch thus yield two types of sources: direct income taxes and

house rent levies. Economists have long acknowledged the close relationship between both

variables, often implicitly accepting that ―the income elasticity of housing is near enough unity

that one could use the value of occupied housing as an index of permanent income‖.108 The

dense fiscal registers of sixteenth-century ‗s-Hertogenbosch allow testing this assumption by

nominally linking households in the income levy of 1507/8 and the house rent tax of 1506/7.

Figure A.1 offers a first visual exploration: each household‘s (estimated) annual income was

plotted on the horizontal axis; the vertical axis represents the share of taxed house rents in this

income. The graph clarifies two aspects: on the one hand, (taxed) income and the share of

income spent on house rent were inversely related as Engel‘s law predicts. For the poorer sorts

house rent ate up 20% or more of annual earnings, while for the most affluent households yearly

rental fees comprised less than 4% of annual income.109 On the other, the relationship between

house rent and income becomes proves more complex on the individual level. For the upper

income brackets earning more than 500 guilders rent rarely amounted to more than 10-15% of

their estimated income, while for the poorer and middling sorts rental fees could easily take away

30% up to more than 50% of annual income. This anything but novel finding leads to significant

implications for the study of income distributions and living standards.110

108 Hoffman e.a., ―Sketching the rise‖, 160. 109 Seventeenth-century Zwolle offers one of the few comparisons. For the locally supported poor, house rent constituted on average 25% of annual income; see van Nederveen Meerkerk, De draad, 305-308. 110 See the many references to English and nineteenth-century research in Baer, ―Stuart London‘s standard of living‖.

[43]

Figure A.1. Share of house rent in estimated annual income, 1506111

A more formal approach further substantiates this problem. The rich fiscal sources of ‗s-

Hertogenbosch allow to estimate the income elasticity of house rent in 1506. Figure A.2 plots

annual income to house rent in the original currency on a double logarithmic scale, and

summarizes two key points to be made from the data. First consider the solid regression curve

estimated from the full dataset. As is known from statistics and economic theory, in the case of a

curve of the functional form y=a*xb, the exponent b constitutes the elasticity. Thus, as can be

learned from the graph for the full dataset the income elasticity of house rent amounted to 0.68,

or in other words, for every 10% increase in income a household spent only 6.8% more on house

rent. Interestingly, but perhaps no more than that, this elasticity number is close to the figure

reported by Boeschoten and van Manen on the relationship between house value and house rent,

which warrants the careful hypothesis that house value indeed comprises a proxy for (permanent)

income.112 House rents, however, should not be considered a ready proxy for income. This

becomes apparent if we maximize the goodness of fit (R²) of the analysis by splitting up the full

dataset in two parts. The results of this exercise are of great interest, for it is revealed that while

for the poorer two-thirds of the urban population (the cut-off between both subsets is situated at

percentile 71) income elasticity of house rents actually approaches unity at 0.94, for the best-off

third this figure amounted to less than 0.50. House rent and income progressed almost parallel

for the middling and lower income brackets, but for the more fortunate a 10% increase in income

111 Sources: see Table A.1. 112 Boeschoten and van Manen, ―Een welstandsverdeling‖.

0%

25%

50%

75%

1 10 100 1000 10000

Shar

e o

f h

ou

se r

en

t

in a

nn

ual

inco

me

Estimated annual income in guilders (log scale)

Scatterplot

Macht (Scatterplot)

[44]

was associated with only a 4.9% rise in rent. In this paper I used the early sixteenth-century

income elasticity of house rent to transform the seventeenth-century house rent distributions into

income estimates. Theoretical objections shatter on heuristic constraints and historical

pragmatism.

Figure A.2. Income elasticity of house rent, 1506113

These calculations lead to the aggregated estimates reported in Table A.2. The top and middle

parts of Panels A and B present nominal figures calculated from the distributions at large. The

disaggregated figures focused on living standards and inequality can be found above. The bottom

rows of both Panels represent the final step in the series of computations required to arrive from

house rent levies to real income estimates. Here general price trends are taken into consideration,

whereby the same method was adopted as in a previous publication.114 In short, by making use of

extensive price data on nearby Antwerp and Utrecht and the scattered price information of early

113 Sources: see Table A.1. 114 Blondé and Hanus, ―Beyond building craftsmen‖.

y = 1,0453x0,4911 R² = 0,9903

y = 0,1824x0,9381 R² = 0,9822

y = 0,3862x0,6778 R² = 0,962

0,1

1

10

100

1000

1 10 100 1000 10000

Ho

use

re

nt

in g

uild

ers

(lo

g sc

ale

)

Annual income in guilders (log scale)

Scatterplot A Scatterplot B

Macht (Scatterplot A) Macht (Scatterplot B)

Macht (Full scatterplot)

[45]

modern ‗s-Hertogenbosch, a price series was reconstructed for sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century ‗s-Hertogenbosch that could be used as deflator.115 More information on the

transformation into welfare ratios can be found in the text above. Tse estimates of ‗Gross Urban

Income‘, or ‗urban GDP per capita‘ comprise the underlying data of Figure 1 above.

Table A.2. Gross Urban Income of 's-Hertogenbosch, 1500-1640116

Panel A. General levies 1501/2 1512/3 1552/3 1557/8

Total tax contribution (fl.) 8,249 9,800 19,176 8,059

Median tax contribution (fl.) 1 1 1.5 0.75

Est. median income (fl.) 45 52 65 65

Population 15,450 16,320 18,860 17,115

Gross Urban Income (fl.) 372,000 511,000 832,000 699,000

GUI per capita (fl.) 24.1 31.3 44.1 40.8

GUI/c in welfare ratios 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.1

GUI/c in 1990 $ 1,272 1,315 1,435 1,373

Panel B. House rent levies 1505/6 1547/8 1569 1636

Total tax contribution (fl.) 2,390 2,366 6,855 23,227

Median tax contribution (fl.) 0.5 0.5 1.5 5

Est. median income (fl.) 47 60 75 240

Population 15,350 18,600 17,500 15,645

Gross Urban Income (fl.) 389,000 585,000 803,000 2,230,000

GUI per capita (fl.) 26.7 32.9 45.9 142.5

GUI/c in welfare ratios 1.1 1.1 0.9 1.0

GUI/c in 1990 $ 1,387 1,294 1,134 1,284

115 van Zanden, ―What happened to the standard of living‖; Munro, ―Builders‘ wages‖. 116 Sources: see Table A.1.

[46]

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