AN ESTIMATE OF THE SIZE ANL STRUCTURE OF THE NATIONAL PRODUCT OF THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE

Abstract

On the basis of rough estimates from the expenditure as well as from the income side, it is suggested that the national product per head of the Roman Empire at the death of Augustus (AD 14) was somewhat below 400 sesterces (31 g gold) yielding an aggregate national product of fully HS 20 billion for a population of 55 million and that these figures were approximately valid from the late first century BC to the mid‐second century AD. The share of government expenditures in national product was very low, probably not above five percent, and that of gross capital expenditures even lower, probably not in excess of two percent. An attempt is also made to appraise the concentration of personal income and it is estimated that the 600 senatorial families, representing approximately the top 0.04 per m of the population, received about 0.6 percent of total personal income while the share of the top three percent of income recipients was in the order of 20–25 percent of total personal incomes. The second part of the article compares these estimates as well as a few indicators of the standard of living and of welfare in the early Roman Empire with the corresponding figures for a few countries before the industrial revolution and for mid‐20th century less developed countries.

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