| ▲ | wqaatwt 5 hours ago | |
> living standards of most Europeans That’s not that clear, at least when it came to the median European. Amongst other things demographic collapse usually results in higher living standards in agricultural societies due to there being more land per capita. | ||
| ▲ | adolph an hour ago | parent [-] | |
Very true in that "living standards" is very subjective. When I wrote that I was thinking of London's population loss, not achieving a similar population until the 1300s. And I was thinking of claims that European literacy rates likewise took a long time to recover. I don't think it is right to say that population loss usually results in higher living standards due to more land per capita. For one, in a pre-industrial society agriculture is labor intensive and the amount of land that can be worked by a person does not scale with land availability. The Black Death [1] economic section works out some of the less than positive impacts. | ||