著者

Bassino Jean-Pascal 馬 徳斌 斎藤 修

出版者

岩波書店

雑誌

経済研究 (ISSN:00229733)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, no.4, pp.348-369, 2005-10

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近年,welfare ratio という新しい指標を用いてアジアと西欧における実質賃金の歴史的水準比較を行う試みがなされている.本稿は,この新たな研究動向とその実証的成果とを,中国・日本・南欧に焦点を当ててサーヴェイする.対象とする時期(1700-1920年)のほとんどを通じて,中国・日本・南欧における実質賃金の水準はほぼ同程度であったが,その welfare ratio 値は想定生存水準である1を下回り,またイングランドとオランダにおける水準よりも明瞭に低位であった.しかし,中国・日本・南欧は小農経済が優位の地域であった.それゆえ,農業からの所得,副業の存在,年間労働日数,消費バスケットの変化などをも考慮に入れて,18世紀における小農家族世帯の生活水準を推計すると,その welfare ratio の水準は北西欧の賃金労働者のそれにかなり近づくことが示唆される.Renewed research effort has been taken to make a rigorous comparison, based on a novel concept of "welfare rati", between Asian and European real wages in early modern times. This paper, an overview of the issues and empirical results the on-going research has so far produced, shows that real wages in historic China, Japan and southern Europe were at about the same level, but remained distinctly lower than in England and the Netherlands for much of the period reviewed. However, the comparison becomes more complicated if factors such as agricultural income, by-employment, working days, and possible changes in the diet mix are taken into account. By examining the case of Tokugawa Japan's peasantry, it is suggested that their standard of living may have been much closer to the standard achieved by early modern north-west European wage-earning populations.