Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
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Grasping Reality with Both Hands The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: A Fair, Balanced, Reality-Based, and More than Two-Handed Look at the World J. Bradford DeLong, Department of Economics, U.C. Berkeley #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880; 925 708 0467; delong@econ.berkeley.edu.
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal One Hundred Interesting Mathematical Calculations: Number 16: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: The mother of the brideto-be says:
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
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Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XVII of Volume III (Chap. 59): Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's is nothing to it -- nothing at all. I am so pleased -- so happy. Such a charming man! -- so handsome! so tall! -- Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted.... My dearest child.... I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it tomorrow. So how rich is Fitzwilliam Darcy, anyway? What does ten thousand (pounds) a year in the aftermath of the Napoleonic War mean, really? I have two answers, the first of which is $300,000 a year, and the second of which is $6,000,000 a year. Consider it first in relative income terms. Output per capita--annual GDP in America today divided by the number of people in America--is valued at some $36,000. Our crude estimates tell us that output per capita in Britain just after the Napoleonic Wars was valued at some 60 pound sterling a year. Thus in relative income terms--relative to the average of disposable incomes in his society--Fitzwilliam Darcy's 10,000 pounds a year of disposable income gave him about the same multiple of average income in his society as an annual disposable income of $6,000,000 a year would give someone in our society. On the other hand, my guess is that someone today with a disposable income of $300,000 a year can spend it to get the same or higher utility as Fitzwilliam Darcy could by spending his disposable income of 10,000 pounds a year. This is a guess--a guess that our material standard of living today is some twenty times that of Mr. Darcy's England. Nevertheless, it is an informed guess. By our standards, early nineteenth century Britain was desperately poor. Moreover, things are made much more complex by the fact that there are lots of things we take for granted--and that are for us trivially cheap--that Fitzwilliam Darcy could not get at any price. Consider that Nathan Meyer Rothschild, richest (non-royal) man in the world in the first half of the nineteenth century, died in his fifties of an infected abscess that the medicine of the day had no way to treat. rated (4.83) by 7 people like you [How? ] You might like:
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
8/5/09 10:32 PM
Servants on the other hand -- where can a successful lawyer find a good footman these days? Posted by: trotsky | July 29, 2009 at 09:01 AM This brings to mind the putative statistic that the average American owns the equivalent of 200 slaves. That always puzzled me, but recently I heard an argument that lighting one light bulb was like having a slave in the basement on a stationary bicycle generating electricity. Suddenly the argument made sense. Still, if I had 200 slaves, I don't think that I would have them in the basement generating electricity. They would be too valuable for that. ;) Posted by: Min | July 29, 2009 at 09:36 AM On the other hand, what would the cost of (guessing here) thirty servants be today ? Assuming $100,000 per you get $3M. My guess is that a servant in 1810 (P&P published in 1813 and takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, that's why the militia is in town) England cost less than 10 pounds a year, or 300 pounds for 30 servants. Jane Eyre (published 1847) is paid 30 pounds a year but she is a governess. (Chapter 10 "I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received (for at Lowood I only got 15 pounds per annum);") and the time frame is later Posted by: marc sobel | July 29, 2009 at 09:43 AM $300,000 a year? No way. If you're going to compare it to modern spending, you'll need to back into it the way the IRS would reconstruct your unreported income. His estate would rent at $350k a year minimum. He has at least 12 full-time servants, even paying them $10 an hour that'd set him back $250k/yr. His clothes alone must set him back $200k (private tailoring isn't cheap.) He has a stinking stable; a dozen purebred horses can cost $1 million for housing and care. Let's not talk about his hounds, his hunting, his travels, his art collections. Sure, he can't buy an Iphone or get a porcelain filling, but that doesn't mean he's living the life of a senior associate at a major law firm. He's still OBSCENELY RICH. If you tried to recreate the life of Darcy in the 21st century, you're looking at professional athlete money at a minimum. Posted by: L2P | July 29, 2009 at 09:48 AM $300,000 a year would not get you anywhere near having the type of house and land that Darcy is described as having. Nor would it get you the large domestic staff, the power, and much else that Darcy had. So, I am not sure that we can spend $300,000 with greater utility than Darcy his ÂŁ10,000. How can you compare the utility of modern medicine, transport, communications, against all the luxuries Darcy enjoyed? To match everything he had you would need to be closer to the $6m a year -- but then you would be better off because you would have modern technology as well. Posted by: Graeme Pietersz | July 29, 2009 at 09:50 AM I prefer Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Posted by: donna | July 29, 2009 at 10:13 AM from Charles Stross: "Agatha Christie once said, 'when I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn't afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car.'" Posted by: monopole | July 29, 2009 at 10:15 AM Here is another way to think about Mrs. Bennett's joy: Darcy's income is about 100 times the median income for a male wage earner (female labor is more difficult to measure, such a large fraction was un-waged). If you multiply this by the U.S. median wage for a full time worker, you get about $4,000,000 , close to the middle of Brad's estimate. Now at the time 'consols' - government bonds that paid interest, but were not amortized were the most popular investment for the respectable classes. They paid about 2%. So Darcy's $4M was earned by a fortune of about $200 million, except that we experience persistent inflation and early 19th c. England had both inflation and deflation. So ... to get an after-inflation after-tax risk free income of $4M, a rentier today would need more than twice that. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/07/hoisted-from-comments-how-rich-is-fitzwilliam-darcy-archive-entry-from-brad-delongs-webjournal.html
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
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income of $4M, a rentier today would need more than twice that. So Ms. Bennett felt as you might feel if your daughter married a man with $500M. in government securities. He won't make the Forbes 400, but she will want for nothing. Posted by: invisible hand | July 29, 2009 at 11:20 AM Remeber, too, that he's not working to get that ten thousand a year--that represents income from his capital. Posted by: rea | July 29, 2009 at 11:37 AM I'd rather be poor in America in 2009 than the richest man in Britain in 1805. You'd have to be menaced and in pain to want to swap places. Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | July 29, 2009 at 12:15 PM "What does ten thousand (pounds) a year in the aftermath of the Napoleonic War mean, really?" A substantial "publication lag" may affect these estimates. Although "Pride and Prejudice" was first published in 1813 (toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars) it is thought to have been written (under the title of "First Impressions") between October 1896 and August 1897, that is before the Napoleonic Wars proper and during the French Revolutionary Wars. War-time inflation had eroded the value of the pound. The House of Commons Report 99/20 "Inflation: The Value of the Pound 1750-1998" finds that the pound lost roughly 45% of its value between in the sixteen years from 1797 and 1813. Unless Jane upped her statement of Darcy's income between the composition and publication (a possibility, though not likely) the value of Darcy's income in nominal terms in 1813, had it kept pace with inflation, would already have been more than 18,000 pounds per annum. Using the same House of Commons paper, I calculate that 10,000 pounds a year in 1797 would be about 665,000 pounds a year in 1998 or 875,000 pounds today. At the 2% consol rate suggested above, this capitalizes to a wealth of about 44 million pounds today. Given the rate of recent British house and land inflation this is not nearly enough to buy and keep "his beautiful grounds at Pemberley" today let alone a house in town. Chatsworth in Derbyshire is often thought to have been the model for Pemberley, though Austen actually never visited the county. It features in the latest (2005) film. The Sunday Times (April 26, 2009) values it and its grounds at 60 million. The wealth of its incumbent (the Duke of Devonshire, 88th on the British “rich list”) is given by the same source as 500 million pounds – exactly the figure that Monopole arrives at (above). That is I think the kind of scale and privilege, if not rank, that Austen was aiming at. Posted by: David Kennett | July 29, 2009 at 12:26 PM We need to make lifestyle adjustments. A modern Darcy wouldn't need 30 servants because of labor-saving devices. A couple of cars and even a driver is likely less of a strain on the budget than a carriage, and all it requires. Horses would be optional, not a necessary part of a gentleman's life. And if a modern Darcy was interested in horses, but not a professional horseman or a fanatic about it, he'd probably have two or three at most. And so on... I'd still guess a couple of million a year. Posted by: CJColucci | July 29, 2009 at 12:35 PM Jeffrey Davis beat me to the House of Commons Research Paper reference. (to be found at http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-020.pdf) But the larger point is the one implied by the range of Prof. DeLong's estimates. As historians sometimes say, the past is a different country. In terms of the autonomy of wealth, Darcy is fabulously rich. As the novel makes clear, he has complete freedom to do whatever he will, when and as he would. In terms of purchasing power, he holds as capital the most expensive single thing available for purchase in his era, a great house and grounds, which in itself produces income and spins off, apparently, sufficient financial capital to compound Darcy's fortune. So he can buy whatever he wants, including the veneer of respectability for a potential sister-in-law. In terms of any attempt to translate that wealth into a calculation of his money income in 21st century terms, the fact that he cannot buy a computer at any price seems off the point. The low estimate is thus, imho, an example of the trouble one can get into by using quantification tools without a close reading of the assumptions that lie behind the numbers. Posted by: Tom Levenson | July 29, 2009 at 01:09 PM Slightly askew of topic, Dan Drezner has a list of his top 10 books to read about international economic history: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/27/the_top_ten_books_to_read_about_international_economic_history.
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
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I'd be interested in the recommendations of anyone here. Posted by: Mark Field | July 29, 2009 at 01:32 PM To try to add to the scholarship here, in Austen's time, a gentleman could live comfortably in London on 100 pounds a year. That would include rooms, dining & wine & entertainment. As has been noted, it's hard to equate landed estates in that era with any modern sense. Putting aside the words in P&P about D'Arcy's fortune - which are never by him but by others who can't know - we have no idea how the income from his vast estates were calculated. Is the 10k figure what the estates generated or is it a net of some sort? The usual way would be the latter, which means D'Arcy was actually much richer than estimated, partly because estates with "good" owners didn't maximize revenues in a modern way. That doesn't mean the 10k is a true net but it's likely a figure after many estate expenses including reserves for repairs. There is no way to know if it would have included labor, but that was cheap. So in that sense, it's not that D'Arcy has 100 times what a gentleman might need but he could have many more times that because as a landed owner his income estimate is probably more net than a gentleman's need for lodging, etc. There was an income tax because of the wars but look at how it was assessed: on farm profits, by deduction when the BofE paid on bonds, on net income from buildings. These are net and thus one would tend to net your income not think of what you got as a gross. I know I'm beating this into the ground, but I've not seen evidence that D'Arcy's income is gross. It should be some form of net and may even be close to actual disposable income. Imagine how much that 10k would be if it didn't include most of the estate expenses. Look at Bingley's fortune. It's variously described as 100k pounds in total and as 5k a year. Those aren't compatible and Austen knew it because yields then were a few percent lower. I suspect Austen had her characters misdescribe Bingley's wealth but she leaves the matter in the air. Bingley leases Netherfield Park but at the end of the book buys an estate. We have no idea how his money was invested before or what income the estate he buys might generate, but he would not likely be making 5k a year from 100k in assets then. (As you know, as the wars progressed, the return from - and the value of - land increased a lot, with much of that being the price of crops.) Posted by: jonathan | July 29, 2009 at 04:14 PM I suspect the industrial revolution greatly raised the cost of most of the things that Darcy was shelling out for. Servents is the thing that everyone else has been talking about, but real estate seems like the largest culprit to me. Even undeveloped, the value of the Darcy real estate in modern Britain would be quite immense. Darcy would be able to afford to do things like keep prime real estate wild as a personal hunting grounds, something that few modern British tycoons could afford. Living in a mansion full of artwork of measeum quality would require ultra-rich status at the prices that modern artists demand. But standard of living is such a subjective term. I wouldn't trade my modern education and internet connection away for all of Darcy's wealth. Posted by: John Whitesell | July 29, 2009 at 04:15 PM What capital did they have that would provide such enormous income? How did dear Fitzwilliam earn his 10,000 pounds (6 mil in today's dollar)? Seems like a lot to earn in a gentlemanly fashion.... Posted by: Anne W. | July 29, 2009 at 06:57 PM Keep in mind that the entire premise - that a fabulously wealthy heir like Darcy would marry a penniless commoner like Elizabeth - is fanciful. Darcy is a fantasy character, and nothing about him - not his personality, not his wealth - can taken as a representation of reality. Posted by: Bloix | July 29, 2009 at 11:55 PM What capital did they have that would provide such enormous income? Land, bearing sheep if in Derbyshire (woollen textiles were an important export sector)and timber (much in demand for shipbuilding). Again, if in Derbyshire, coal, in vast quantities. Very likely sugar plantations in the Caribbean too, if he's as rich as that. Possibly he would be an absentee landlord in Ireland, importing grain and horses to Britain Government stocks, as has been pointed out, would be central to his portfolio, but he would hold various stocks and shares, though many of these would be somewhat depressed in wartime, as most of them would be highly sensitive to the export potential of manufactures and raw materials. Any canal and turnpike shares, though, would be doing well. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/07/hoisted-from-comments-how-rich-is-fitzwilliam-darcy-archive-entry-from-brad-delongs-webjournal.html
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manufactures and raw materials. Any canal and turnpike shares, though, would be doing well. If he's really as rich as the Duke of Devonshire, he possibly has an interest in the East India Company. Posted by: chris y | July 30, 2009 at 12:30 AM Keep in mind that the entire premise - that a fabulously wealthy heir like Darcy would marry a penniless commoner like Elizabeth - is fanciful. I don't know about that. Lord Cardigan married Elizabeth Tollemache, who was IIRC a penniless divorcee. Someone of Darcy's position could more or less do what the hell he liked - though he didn't have the same protection from law that a peer would have. Posted by: ajay | July 30, 2009 at 03:21 AM A number of notables married penniless women, including a few actresses and courtesans. But Austen specifically calculates the Elizabeth / D'Arcy union. Elizabeth's father is a gentleman, meaning he's a landowner who lives off rents. But her mother's family was in trade - note Lady Catherine's references to that side of her family. Elizabeth's father's estate is entailed (and will be inherited by Mr. Collins), so she'll be a gentleman's daughter with very little money, no dowry and thus is at the literal low end of the gentlemanly class. D'Arcy is fabulously wealthy but he's also of the gentlemanly class. Elizabeth notes this - that both their fathers are gentleman. This means specifically that D'Arcy is not a noble. His mother was - and thus his aunt and uncle (only referred to in the book) - but his father was not. D'Arcy's family goes back to the Normans - the French name - so it is ancient, wealthy and yet somehow not part of the nobility. D'Arcy is literally at the top edge of the gentlemanly class: rich as Croesus, ancient line, noble mother. The concept of gentleman is also noted with regard to Bingley. D'Arcy's cousin - the one Lizzy likes so much - notes that Bingley is a "pleasant, gentleman-like" fellow. He isn't then a gentleman because he doesn't own land and live off its earnings. That is why Bingley's quest is to find an estate and why he buys one after he's married to Jane. The subtleties of class are mostly lost in time and Americans never got it. Posted by: jonathan | July 30, 2009 at 09:02 AM
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Hoisted from Comments: How Rich Is Fitzwilliam Darcy?: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
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