From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Malthusians are mistaken
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 02:12:51 GMT

rf@cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns):
>>>In poor countries with subsistence farming and low industry, children
>>>are early on a net asset, able to help in the fields and home.
>
>[Statistics on arable land in response to a naive model of subsistence
>economics]

Let's keep our eye on the ball, rather than be side-tracked into the
always-enjoyable game of "my explanation is more plausible than yours":
I've seen the statement about children-as-an-asset a *lot*, and my
impression is that everyone is citing everyone else.  I've never seen
any evidence (beyond "common sense") to support this contention, and
I'd be most interested to know if there is any.

>>>Importantly, they are also the only form of "Social Security" parents
>>>will have in their old age.

I'd also be interested in evidence to support this claim, but we'd
probably get bogged down in definitions.  Let's note, in passing, that
most people in subsistence economies do have children, and that aged
people with children are better off in these economies than those without.

>I would be interested to see any references you may have about purchase,
>by peasants, of old-age provision in mediaeval times.  It conflicts with
>a lot of my (not terribly extensive) reading of mediaeval history.

No it doesn't, unless you've read references that stated that this didn't
happen.  What you mean is that it conflicts with the impressions from
that reading.

My favorite secondary source for this area is "Marriage and Family in
the Middle Ages", by Frances and Joseph Gies.  This is from a chapter
on the High Middle Ages:

"In old age, a provident villager could take advantage of a maintenance
contract, a medieval form of social security.  Originally informal
agreements between generations involving the exchange of land by the
old for the labor of the young, these contracts were now often spelled
out in the manorial courts... 

"Most old people showed a preference for remaining in their own houses, but
some moved to a cottage.  They might purchase from a monastery a kind of
pension called a "corrody"...[which typically] specified a number of loaves
of bread, gallons of ale, amounts of tallow, salt, and oatmeal per year,
plus meat and fish served daily from the monastery kitchen, and either
a room "with a place by the fire" or a dwelling house supplied with firewood
and hay.  The corrody had great flexibility.  In 1317 a woman purchased
a lavish version for 140 marks, while the same year a servent of Worcester
Cathedral Priory contracted for one for 10 marks.  The first contract
guaranteed three loaves of bread (one white) and two gallons of ale per
day, and every year six pigs, two oxen, twelve cheeses, a hundred stockfish,
a thousand herrings, and 24 shillings worth of clothing.  The 10-mark corrody
bought four "servants' loaves" and six gallons of beer a week plus a daily
"dish" from the monastery kitchen."

References are provided for this and other examples.  I agree that this
is somewhat at odds with the stereotypical picture of the middle ages,
but when you think about it, are people likely to resign themselves to
starvation in their old ages simply because insurance hasn't been
invented yet?

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science