Table 5.
Effects on Income per Capita versus Population Density
| (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| OLS | OLS | OLS | OLS | OLS | OLS | |
|
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| Dependent Variable is: | ||||||
| Log Income per Capita in: | Log Population Density in: | |||||
| 1500 CE | 1000 CE | 1 CE | 1500 CE | 1000 CE | 1 CE | |
|
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| Log Years since Neolithic Transition | 0.159 (0.136) | 0.073 (0.045) | 0.109 (0.072) | 1.337** (0.594) | 0.832** (0.363) | 1.006** (0.481) |
| Log Land Productivity | 0.041 (0.025) | −0.021 (0.025) | −0.001 (0.027) | 0.584*** (0.159) | 0.364*** (0.110) | 0.681** (0.255) |
| Log Absolute Latitude | −0.041 (0.073) | 0.060 (0.147) | −0.175 (0.175) | 0.050 (0.463) | −2.140** (0.801) | −2.163** (0.979) |
| Mean Distance to Nearest Coast or River | 0.215 (0.198) | −0.111 (0.138) | 0.043 (0.159) | −0.429 (1.237) | −0.237 (0.751) | 0.118 (0.883) |
| Percentage of Land within 100 km of Coast or River | 0.124 (0.145) | −0.150 (0.121) | 0.042 (0.127) | 1.855** (0.820) | 1.326** (0.615) | 0.228 (0.919) |
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| Continent Dummies | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Observations | 31 | 26 | 29 | 31 | 26 | 29 |
| R-squared | 0.66 | 0.68 | 0.33 | 0.88 | 0.95 | 0.89 |
Summary – This table establishes, consistently with Malthusian predictions, the relatively small effects of land productivity and the level of technological advancement, as proxied by the timing of the Neolithic Revolution, on income per capita in the years 1500 CE, 1000 CE and 1 CE, but their significantly larger effects on population density in the same time periods, while controlling for access to navigable waterways, absolute latitude, and unobserved continental fixed effects.
Notes – (i) log land productivity is the first principal component of the log of the percentage of arable land and the log of an agricultural suitability index; (ii) a single continent dummy is used to represent the Americas, which is natural given the historical period examined; (iii) regressions (2)–(3) and (5)–(6) do not employ the Oceania dummy due to a single observation for this continent in the corresponding regression samples, restricted by the availability of income per capita data; (iv) robust standard error estimates are reported in parentheses; (v) *** denotes statistical significance at the 1 percent level, ** at the 5 percent level, and * at the 10 percent level, all for two-sided hypothesis tests.