Socioeconomic differences in population growth in 19th century Liaoning, China: a decomposition

We decompose population growth in 19th century Liaoning in northeast China into the shares
accounted for by different socioeconomic groups, and by time periods with different economic
conditions as reflected in grain prices. This decomposition reveals who benefitted the most when
social and economic conditions supported population increase. Previous studies of one region for
which relevant data are available, northeast China, showed that birth and death rates varied
according to community, household, and individual context, but did not investigate differences in
growth rates by context, or the shares of population growth accounted for by each group. Using
the same dataset, we decompose population growth by synthesizing differentials in mortality and
fertility into estimates of implied growth rates of population subgroups and the shares of total
population growth they account for. This decomposition framework can be applied in any setting
where household registers or other sources allow for the measurement of the mortality and
fertility rates of population subgroups at fixed points of time. We show that advantaged socioeconomic
groups contributed disproportionately to population growth in northeast China, and
that more growth took place when harvests were good, that is when grain prices were low. Even
though mortality and fertility responses to grain price fluctuations varied across subgroups, there
is no evidence of differential response of growth rates to these fluctuations. We conclude by
discussing the implications of our findings for our understanding of population dynamics in the
late Qing.