How The Black Death Increased Worker's Wages: Medieval England's Economic Revolution | IEA Interview

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Around 1300, Europe’s economic center was moving from Italian city-states toward England and the Low Countries.
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When lords leased dairy herds, salaried dairy maids could become independent operators selling livestock products themselves.
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Post-plague wages acted like a ratchet: labor scarcity pushed them up, but economic pressure struggled to pull them down.
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After the plague, scarce labor and abundant land pushed landlords from direct farming back toward fixed-sum leases.
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Once one leaseholder controlled an entire manor, prices could dictate crops instead of neighboring strip-holders.
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After the plague, one harvest could potentially pay a laborer’s entire annual rent, freeing months for farming personal land.
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After the plague, peasants could acquire land, rent it, and use higher wages to combine farming with short-term work.
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England's labor costs were substantially higher than France's, helping explain why industrialization emerged in England rather than France.
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As poorer peasants became richer, they chose better grains instead of simply buying more cheap grain.
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England's fifteenth-century agricultural productivity may have helped lay industrialization's foundations, but history had no predetermined path.
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Agricultural productivity feeds industrialization by freeing workers from farms to support a growing industrial population.
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A medieval English person could travel roughly 20 kilometers daily, making markets practical within about 10 kilometers.
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Between 1250 and 1450, cash payments grew, but grain wages never disappeared and even rents were paid in kind.
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The horse collar made horses viable on Northwest Europe’s heavy, fertile soils, replacing oxen.
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By 1300, horses supplied 40% of England’s animal power, rising from virtually zero.
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Sheep powered the North Sea wool industry, while post-plague food demand made cattle increasingly profitable.
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Medieval London held only tens of thousands of people. Most English towns had fewer than 10,000.
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A soaring harvest wage did not prove year-round prosperity: harvest work arrived only once annually.
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The Black Death killed roughly half of England’s population, turning scarce land and abundant labor upside down.

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