# **<u>WEB DATA APPENDIX</u>**

### **Summary:** _This Web Data Appendix describes in details the data we use in our analysis._

## **Sample Selection for Industrial Europe and Today’s Developing World:**

We use three different samples in our analysis. First, we obtain historical urban data for 19 European and North American countries from 1700-1950, and 116 Africa, Asian or non-North American countries that were still developing countries in 1960, from 1960-2010. We exclude from our analysis the European and Neo-European countries for which we could not find historically consistent urban data, as well as the former CIS countries. We use these countries to describe urban patterns in “Industrial Europe” (which also includes a Neo-European country, the United States) and four developing areas: Sub-Saharan Africa (which we call “Africa”), Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and Middle-East and North Africa (MENA). Second, our main sample consists of 40 of these countries from 1700 to 2010. These are the countries for which we found historical demographic data. Historical consistent data was not found for other countries. The list of countries and years (or periods) for which we have data is reported in Web Appendix Tables 1, 2 and 3. These countries belong to the five developing areas: Industrial Europe (N = 7, about every 40 years in 1700-2010), Africa (N = 10, every ten years in 1960-2010), Asia (N = 12, ditto), LAC (N = 8, ditto) and MENA (N = 5, ditto). Third, we also collect cross-sectional data for 97 out of the 116 developing countries in 1960 for which we were to able to find demographic data, for the most recent period. The countries of Africa, Asia, the LAC and MENA regions are then classified into 13 regions: Central Africa, Eastern Africa and Western Africa for Africa; East Asia, Pacific Islands, South Asia and South-East Asia for Asia; Caribbean, Central America and South America for the LAC region; and Middle-East and North Africa for the MENA region.

## **Urban and Rural Growth and Urbanization Rates in Industrial Europe:**

The annual urban growth rate is the average growth rate of the urban population between two years (%). The annual rural growth rate is the average growth rate of the rural population between two years (%). The urbanization rate is defined as the share of the urban population in total population (%). We use Bairoch (1988) and Malanima and Volckart (2007) to reconstruct consistent annual urban growth rates and urbanization rates for 18 Western European countries and the United States for the following periods: 1700-1750, 1750-1800, 1800-1850, 1850-1910 and 1910-1950. Averages are estimated using the population weights for the same period. We consider 7 countries in our main urban demographic analysis (listed in Web Appendix Table 1), as consistent historical demographic data could not be found for the 12 other countries.

## **Urban and Rural Growth and Urbanization Rates in Today’s Developing World:**

We reference Bairoch (1988), Sluglett (2008) and WUP (2011) to reconstruct the average annual urban growth rates (%) and urbanization rates (%) for Africa, Asia and the LAC and MENA regions for the following periods: 1900-1920, 1920-1930, 1930-1950, 1950-1960, 1960-1970, 1970-1980, 1980-1990, 1990-2000 and 2000-2010. For the last six decades (post-1950), we use data for 116 African, Asian and non-North American countries. Averages are estimated using the population weights for the same period. We only consider 35 countries in the panel analysis from 1960-2010 A. 4