Disposable Income as a Measure of the Economic Situation of Peasants and the Rural Population in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This article presents a method for the direct calculation of peasant income in eighteenth-century Germany and tests it on farm accounts from southern Lower Saxony. The aim is to determine peasant income in its absolute amount, contributing to the agrarian history of Germany with insights that cannot be derived from the analysis of relative shifts in wages, prices, and ground rents alone.
The primary sources are farm accounts for full-peasant holdings in the district of Petze around 1770, supplemented by estate registers from the Lower Saxony State Archive in Wolfenbüttel and the works of Wilhelm Abel and Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning. The method of direct farm accounting allows a differentiated analysis of all income and expenditure positions, including payments in kind, hired labour, and feudal dues and taxes.
The study shows that peasant income - after deductions for material costs, hired labour, feudal dues and taxes, tithes, and state levies - amounted to only about 23 per cent of gross output. The ground rent alone consumed nearly 90 per cent of disposable income. Over the century the position of peasants improved considerably as rising agricultural prices with largely stable cash wages increased the farmer's income share. The nominal wages of rural craftsmen also rose while their real wages remained stable and the gap with urban wages narrowed.
The rural social structure was complex: while farmers benefited from rising prices, the sub-peasant population depended on earnings outside agriculture since seasonal harvest work alone did not provide sufficient income. The article concludes by noting the methodological limits and the need for further archival research into the representativeness of the findings.