ECONOMIC IMPACT OF THE GREAT IRISH FAMINEt

The Great Irish Famine killed at least 1 million people and led more than that number to emigrate, but the Famine is not the only dramatic element in Ireland's population history. Between 1700 and 1845 Ireland's population more than quadrupled to over 8 million people. Following the Famine the population declined for more than a century. Depopulation did not cease until 1951, and even then increases were modest and not always sustained. Ireland's population history remains a testing ground for theories about the relationship between population and economic growth, and it has some relevance to those issues in contemporary society. This paper first sets the demographic consequences of the Great Famine in the context of Ireland's long-term population history and then discusses what may be the most puzzling feature of Irish population history, the demographic patterns that emerged during the second half of the 19th century. The paper focuses on rural Ireland, where these changes were most stark. Ireland's population history has long been presented in frankly Malthusian terms (e.g., Kenneth H. Connell, 1962; D. B. Grigg, 1980). According to this view, population growth before the Famine was too rapid to be sustained by a small, primarily agricul