Deane and Cole on Industrialization and Population Change in the Eighteenth Century.

The article examines the properties of the statistical technique used by economists Phyllis Deane and W.A. Cole on their book "British Economic Growth: 1688-1959." The technique is used to estimate the amount of population increase in Great Britain which is attributable to migration. These explanations of the differences in the pattern of demographic evolution in the major industrial counties in Great Britain are largely speculative, and it is not at present possible to check the assumptions on which they are based. The bulk of population increase in the industrial counties is commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution came from natural increase rather than from migration. It is not the defects in the underlying statistics which are the object of concern in this note, if by statistics Deane and Cole mean the raw data which they use. The raw data which Deane and Cole have for each county are estimates of baptisms, marriages, and burials as recorded for each parish in response to census inquiries. Deane and Cole use parish figures supplied for 1781 to provide some interpolation between 1751 and 1801.