How do changes in population structure such as population aging affect housing markets? This paper exploits historical demographic changes to identify the effect of urban demographic change on housing costs, building on half a millennium of data on house prices, rents, and demographics. We show...

This paper studies the relationship between pre-famine living conditions and famine severity. I digitise the parish-level returns of the Irish Poor Inquiry and use these to explain the co-variates of increasing poverty in the early nineteenth century and examine how they impacted the severity of...

The research provides the first empirical examination of the hypothesized effect of industrialization on the fertility decline. Exploiting exogenous source of regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study establishes that industrialization was a major catalyst in...

This paper studies the relationship between pre-famine living conditions and famine severity. I digitise the parish-level returns of the Irish Poor Inquiry and use these to explain the co-variates of increasing poverty in the early nineteenth century and examine how they impacted the severity of...

Individuals aged 65 years and older currently make up a larger share of the population than ever before, and this group is predicted to continue growing both in absolute terms and relative to the rest of the population. This chapter begins by introducing the facts, figures, and forecasts...

Simple Malthusian models remain an important tool for understanding pre-modern demographic systems and their connection to the economy. But most recent literature has lost sight of the institutional context for demographic behavior that lay at the heart of Malthus's own analysis. This paper...