Screen LibraryThe wealth and poverty of African states : economic growth, living standards and taxation since the late nineteenth century /
"The purpose of this short book is to take stock of the many empirical contributions over the past decade. A wealth of new historical data have been unearthed, collated, and organized, much of it from colonial archives but some from other sources such as military files that recorded the heights...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Cambridge, United Kingdom : |
| Publication Dates: | 2022. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
New approaches to economic and social history
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| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
"The purpose of this short book is to take stock of the many empirical contributions over the past decade. A wealth of new historical data have been unearthed, collated, and organized, much of it from colonial archives but some from other sources such as military files that recorded the heights of soldier recruits and trading companies that recorded prices and wages. To date, the new estimates of levels and trends in wages, growth, living standards, and taxes have been presented in a piecemeal fashion. This book takes up the challenge of synthesizing the new knowledge and assessing how this decade of research has challenged and refined the big research questions posed a decade or more ago"-- A wealth of new data has been unearthed in recent years on African economic growth, wages, living standards, and taxes. In The Wealth and Poverty of African States, Morten Jerven shows how these findings are transforming our understanding of African economic development. He focuses on the central themes and questions that these state records can answer, tracing the evolution of these African states and the historical footprints they have left behind. By linking the history of the colonial and postcolonial periods, he reveals an aggregate pattern of long-run growth from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, which gave way to the widespread failure and decline of the 1980s that has been followed by two decades of expansion since the late 1990s. The result is a new framework for understanding the causes of poverty and wealth and the trajectories of economic growth and state development in Africa that straddled the twentieth century--back cover. |
| Carrier Form: | xvi, 180 pages : illustrations, maps, forms ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-175) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9781108440707 1108440703 9781108424592 1108424597 |
| Index Number: | HC800 |
| CLC: | F140.9 |
| Call Number: | F140.9/J57 |
| Contents: | 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. |