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Conjunctural poor and structural poor: some preliminary considerations on poverty, the life-cycle and economic crisis in early-nineteenth-century Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Paola Subacchi
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Continuity and Change , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 65 - 86
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, Poverty: a study of town life (London, 1899)Google Scholar. See also Beier, A. L., ‘The social problems of an Elizabethan country town: Warwick, 1580–90’, in Clarks, P. ed., Country towns in pre-industrial England (Leicester, 1981), 46–85.Google Scholar

2 See R. Wall, ‘Measuring poverty over the life-cycle’, paper presented at the 10th International Economic History Conference, Leuven, 1990 (and forthcoming in Wall, R. and Henderson, J. eds., Poor women and children in the European past (Routledge, 1993)).Google Scholar

3 Of course the intensity of poverty in some phases of the life-cycle might also vary according to the extent and nature of the informal aid provided by kin and neighbours.

4 Wall, , ‘Measuring poverty’.Google Scholar

5 Gutton, J. P., La société et les pauvres en Europe (XVI–XVIII siècles) (Paris, 1974)Google Scholar; Pullan, B., ‘Poveri, mendicanti e vagabondi (secoli XIV–XVII)’, in Storia d'Italia, Annali 1 (Turin, 1978), 988–9.Google Scholar

6 However, it is true that the number of the structural poor could be increased during economic crises by the fact that some of them could no longer be supported by their children, kin or neighbours who were themselves affected by severe hardships.

7 Archivio di Stato, Piacenza (hereafter ASPc), ‘Commercio, agricoltura, industria’, 1, ‘Risposte dei parroci alia circolare del 21 luglio 1815. Disoccupati e poveri delle parrocchie di Piacenza: elenco nominativo’.

8 The parish priests were requested to answer the following questions concerning the state of poverty in their parishes: How many people are able to work but are currently unemployed? In which kind of job could they be properly employed? How many people are not at all able to work? The general characteristics of enquiries into poverty made in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century are described in Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (London, 1986), 118–27.Google Scholar

9 ASPc, ‘Censimento della popolazione, 1817’.

10 On the other hand, the document does not list beggars, vagrants and idle able-bodied poor. Probably the compilers selected the poor according to the accepted categories of poveri meritevoli and poveri non meritevoli, and then disregarded this second group. Reformers of the Enlightment, reflecting the view that the charitable institutions were responsible for the growth in the number of the poor, typically distinguished between those deserving assistance and the able-bodied poor and beggars who exploited charity in order to avoid work. Charity was due to those categories of unfortunate individuals traditionally identified as genuinely destitute and incapable of aiding themselves - the aged, infirm, orphans, widows. The able-bodied should be cured of their idleness and forced to work. See Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 77.Google Scholar

11 See M. Van Leuween, ‘Surviving with little help. The importance of charity to the pre-industrial poor of Amsterdam’, paper presented at the 10th International Economic History Conference, Leuven, 1990 (a copy is available in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure library, in Cambridge); Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 198–217.Google Scholar

12 More precisely, in 1812 the Bureau de Bienfaisance decided to buy 350 hl. of corn, ‘which, once ground, will give 12,000 rations of flour of 1.9 Kilos each’. Again, in the winter of 1813–14, the Bureau distributed 15,000 pieces of kindling wood to the poor; then, in January 1814, it provided 4,758 kg. of rice and 27,8561. of corn to the poor of the town. By November of the same year these figures had dropped to 3,172 kg. of rice and 20,892 1. of corn (ASPc, ‘Ente comunale di assistenza’, Moniteur 87, 29 11 1812Google Scholar; ASPc, ‘Ente comunale di assistenza’, sezione I, registri.

13 For the total population of Piacenza see Spaggiari, P. L., Economia e finanza negli stati parmensi (1814–1859) (Milan, 1961), 54Google Scholar. A general survey of Italian demographic trends is provided by Bellettini, A., ‘La popolazione italiana dall'inizio dell'era volgare ai giorni nostri’, in Storia d'Italia V (Turin, 1975), 489–535.Google Scholar

14 Salvatico, P., Notizie statistiche intorno la città e il comune di Piacenza (Piacenza, 1857). This survey refers only to data on the whole population and does not allow more specific comparisons with the situation recorded for 1815.Google Scholar

15 All this information is drawn from Benassi, U., Guglielmo Du Tillot. Un ministro riformatore del secolo XVIII (Parma, 1923).Google Scholar

16 ‘Producers of this type have neither workshop nor factory. Their sole role is to provide the raw material, namely linen and partly processed cotton, to the fustian-makers, who are to be found throughout the town, and are the masters of their trade and employ them whenever the occasion demands.’ ASPc, ‘Miscellanea Ottolenghi’, 20, ‘Mercato del bestiame’. See Banti, A. M., Terra e denaro (Venice, 1989), 35–40.Google Scholar

17 See Spaggiari, , Economia e finanza, 32–3Google Scholar; De Maddalena, A., ‘Considerazioni sull'attività industriale e commerciale negli Stati parmensi dal 1796 al 1814’, Studi Parmensi 9 (1959), 45–83.Google Scholar

18 Hufton, O., The poor in eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 1974), 69–127.Google Scholar

19 ASPc, ‘Commercio, agricoltura, industria’, 1, San Paolo. Only 15 priests, asked about the conditions of the poor in their parishes, listed the previous employment of each poor person; the rest just listed the most common jobs among the poor. For instance the report from the parish priest of San Bartolomeo says: ‘I poveri di questa parrocchia atti a lavorare e che mancano di travaglio sono facchini e giornalieri da ortolano e da campagna, i quali a volte travagliano, ma passato qualche mese non hanno piú da travagliare. Altri poi sono garzoni da muratore, e muratori, altri servitori il cui salario non è sufficiente per mantenere la loro famiglia per la carezza de’ generi. Altri infine sono filabombace… e queste povere donne, oltre il dover filare per i mercanti a vil prezzo, per lo più non ne hanno da filare’ (‘The poor living in this parish who are able to work but at the present are unemployed are porters and day labourers. In addition, there are apprentice-bricklayers and bricklayers, and servants whose wages are insufficient to support their families. Finally, many women who used to weave for merchants, even for a pittance, are now without any employment’) (ASPc, ‘Commercio, agricoltura, industria’, 1, San Bartolomeo).

20 In 1870 the poor asking for public relief showed the same range of employments: 16.7 per cent of them were labourers, 11.4 per cent shoemakers, 6.3 per cent bricklayers, 5.9 per cent servants and 5.4 per cent carpenters. See Zucchini, G., ‘Povertà e assistenza a Piacenza nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento: la Congregazione di carità’, Studi Piacentini 3 (1988), 77.Google Scholar

21 See Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 11–20Google Scholar; Smith, R. M., ‘Some issues concerning families and their property in rural England, 1250–1800’, in Smith, R. M. ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 1–86Google Scholar. On the family economy see also D. S. Reher and E. Camps-Cura, ‘Considerations on family economies in Spain’, unpublished paper, 1991 (a copy is available in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure's library in Cambridge). The authors argue that it is impossible to appreciate the full complexity of family economies if the analysis is exclusively centered on the household. In fact, over the life-course there were continual flows of income entering or leaving the household, to or from sources not directly linked to it.

22 It is also necessary to take into account that economic self-sufficiency, though not as widespread as in the countryside, was relevant for the urban family economy too.

23 See Rowntree, B. S., Poverty: a study of town life (London, 1901), 167–8Google Scholar; Mueller, E., ‘The economic value of children in peasant agriculture’, in Ridker, R. G. ed., Population and development (Baltimore, Md, 1976), 98–153Google Scholar. On the basis of the evidence found by Richard Wall for nineteenth- and twentieth-century England and Wales, it is also possible to argue that the family matched the increase in its size by reducing the amount consumed by the daughters. See Wall, R., ‘Some inequalities in the raising of boys and girls in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England and Wales’, working paper of the Social History Workshop, Department of History, Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota, 1989.Google Scholar

24 Hufton, , The poor in eighteenth-century France, 33Google Scholar; Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 183.Google Scholar

25 Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 184–5Google Scholar. This contradicts what has been argued by those economists who believe that children may provide an important source of family income, especially if they live at home until they marry. In this case relatively large families are functional. See Oppenheimer, V. K., ‘The life-cycle squeeze: the interaction of men's occupational and family life-cycle’, Demography 11 (1982), 227–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robertson, A. F., Beyond the family: the social organization of human reproduction (Cambridge, 1991).Google Scholar

26 The features of the poor population of Piacenza show that it fits into the general tendency of Western European population. See Flinn, M. W., The European demographic system (Brighton, 1981)Google Scholar; Laslett, P. ed., Household and family in past times (Cambridge, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, R., ‘European family and household systems’, in Historiens et population (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1991), 624.Google Scholar

27 Sokoll, T., ‘The pauper household small and simple? The evidence from listings of inhabitants and pauper lists of early modern England reassessed’, Ethnologia Europaea XVII (1987), 25–42.Google Scholar

28 This ratio is similar to that calculated for Florence in 1810, which was 75 males to 100 females (Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 168).Google Scholar

29 In this group two women whose husbands were in jail have also been included.

30 Hans Medick, discussing the demographic implications of proto-industrialization, considers the question of pauperisation: ‘The “extended family”’, he argues, ‘functioned as a private institution to redistribute the poverty of the nuclear family by way of the kinship system.’ See Medick, H., ‘The proto-industrial family economy: the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant society to industrial capitalism’, Social History 3 (1976), 295.Google Scholar

31 See Barbagli, M., Sotto lo stesso tetto (Bologna, 1984), 45–128.Google Scholar

32 Tim Wales argues that many of the poor would not have been financially able to aid their relatives, but kin did support and co-operate with each other in other ways. See Wales, T., ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk’, in Smith, R. M. ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 383Google Scholar. See also Viazzo, P. P., ‘Family structures and the early phase in the individual life-cycle: a Southern European perspective’, paper presented at the 10th International Economic History Conference, Leuven, 1990Google Scholar (and forthcoming in Wall, R. and Henderson, J. eds., Poor women and children in the European past (Routledge, 1993)).Google Scholar

33 Zucchini, G., ‘Povertà e assistenza a Piacenza’, 70–9Google Scholar. On the other hand, it is likely that children could have provided company and domestic help to their grandparents. See Laslett, P., ‘Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in pre-industrial Europe: a consideration of the “nuclear-hardship” hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988), 153–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 To set out the turning points relating to age I have relied in particular on Richard Smith's model, though it refers to a different economic organization and to a different institutional framework. I have also taken into account Chayanov's and Rowntree's models. See Smith, , ‘Some issues concerning families and their property’, 68–86.Google Scholar

35 See Barbagli, , Sotto lo stesso tetto, 47.Google Scholar

36 This hypothesis is not completely correct, but illustrates the difficulties in assessing the real contribution made by women to the household. Most of them in fact were employed in casual labour and odd jobs. See Woolf, , The poor in Western Europe, 38–9Google Scholar; Hufton, , The poor in eighteenth-century France, 174–85Google Scholar; Wales, , ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle’, 382.Google Scholar

37 Since the characteristics of the households of the conjunctural poor are closer to those of the population in general, the family model applies better to the former than to the latter. For this reason, from now on I will deal exclusively with the group of the conjunctural poor. Moreover, I would like to reiterate that at issue are the conjunctural poor who, though old, were still able to work, but at that moment were unemployed or whose wages were insufficient to guarantee a livelihood. The proportion of the conjunctural poor over 60 years of age is lower than that corresponding to the structural poor of the same age. In the first group are included those who, even though old, were still able to work, while in the count of the structural poor are included all people unable to do any kind of work.

38 In Figures 2 and 3 only the simple family households of the conjunctural poor have been taken into account.

39 In addition, Smith's model ignores both the capacity for saving and indebtedness. In fact couples could produce potential surpluses during some stages of their life-cycles and deficits during others. Savings and consumer credit enabled them to transfer their purchasing power from periods of lesser need to periods of greater need.

40 Gutton defines the poor as ‘ceux qui vivent sans avance’ (La société et les pauvres en Europe, 53).

41 Pullan, , ‘Poveri, mendicanti e vagabondi’, 988–9.Google Scholar

42 In seventeenth-century Norfolk, individuals appeared on relief lists as they gradually ceased to be economically self-supporting, and as their ability to earn declined they received more from the parish (Wales, , ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle’, 367)Google Scholar. Moreover, as recent research has pointed out, old age as a cause of structural poverty was more marked for men than for women. See P. Carasa Soto, ‘Vieillesse et pauvreté en Castille, 1750–1900’, paper presented at the 10th International Economic History Conference, Leuven, 1990 (a copy is available in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure library, in Cambridge).