The Wealth and Poverty of African States Book contents
- The Wealth and Poverty of African States
- New Approaches to Economic and Social History
- The Wealth and Poverty of African States
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 A New Economic History for Africa?
- 2 Seeing Like an African State in the Twentieth Century
- 3 New Data and New Perspectives on Economic Growth in Africa
- 4 State Capacity across the Twentieth Century: Evidence from Taxation
- 5 Wages and Poverty: From Roots of Poverty to Trajectories of Living Standards
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix to Chapter 3
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2022
- The Wealth and Poverty of African States
- New Approaches to Economic and Social History
- The Wealth and Poverty of African States
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 A New Economic History for Africa?
- 2 Seeing Like an African State in the Twentieth Century
- 3 New Data and New Perspectives on Economic Growth in Africa
- 4 State Capacity across the Twentieth Century: Evidence from Taxation
- 5 Wages and Poverty: From Roots of Poverty to Trajectories of Living Standards
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix to Chapter 3
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The new African economic history used econometric methods and quantitative data to make big claims about the causes of Africa’s current relative poverty vis-à-vis the rest of the world, especially the wealthy countries in the West. At first historians did not respond to these claims, as Hopkins (2009) pointed out, while African economic historians tended to warn about the “compression of history” (Austin, 2009). This book has sought to summarize some of my own research and that of many other economic historians whose research has contributed to a decompression of history by providing long-term historical time series on some of the central metrics of economic development: wages, poverty, living standards, taxation, and economic growth.
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- The Wealth and Poverty of African StatesEconomic Growth, Living Standards and Taxation since the Late Nineteenth Century, pp. 144 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022