On page 29 in your textbook there is a line graph titled "Decline in Real Wages in England, 1500-1700." This graph shows the index of real wages, using 1500 as the base year. Real wages are
not the amount of money a person earns but an estimate of what that amount
of money at that time would allow the person to purchase. Economists derive
these indexes by looking at the prices of a variety of goods and services offered in a given year and the
actual wages earned by workers in the same period. Thus the index of real
wages is a better indicator of people's standard of living than just looking at the amount of their earnings. In the graph the real wages, or standard of living, of English workers
in 1500 is represented as 100. By following the line on the graph to 1700,
one can see at a glance by how much that standard of living declined over
the period. The importance of this graph is the light it can throw on historical causation. Based on this
graph, how would you answer the following questions?
- Did English people have strong economic motives for emigrating?
- During which years would English people have had the greatest economic reasons
for leaving home? Do these years correspond to periods of rapid population
growth in the New England, Chesapeake, and Caribbean colonies?
- After 1700 the proportion of non-English immigrants arriving in England's mainland colonies increased and the proportion of English immigrants declined.
Does the graph offer any clues as to why this occurred?
