This paper provides the first quantitative assessment of colonial Jamaican real incomes and income inequality. We collect local prices to construct cost of living and purchasing power parity indicators. The latter lowers Jamaica's GDP per capita compared with the rest of the Atlantic economy. We also compute welfare ratios for a range of occupations and build a social table. We find that, being a net food importer, the slave colony had extremely high living costs, which rose steeply during the American War of Independence, and low standards of living, particularly for its enslaved population, but also for the free unskilled population that competed with slave labor. Our results also show that due to its extreme poverty for the many in the middle of great wealth for the few, Jamaica was the most unequal place yet studied in the pre-modern world. Furthermore, all of these characteristics applied to the free population alone.

本文首次对牙买加殖民地的实际收入和收入不平等进行了定量评估。我们收集当地价格，以构建生活成本和购买力平价指标。与大西洋其他地区相比，后者降低了牙买加的人均GDP。我们还计算了一系列职业的福利比率，并建立了一个社会表格。我们发现，作为粮食净进口国，奴隶殖民地的生活成本极高，在美国独立战争期间急剧上升，生活水平低下，特别是对于其被奴役的人口，以及那些竞争的自由非熟练人口与奴隶劳动。我们的研究结果还表明，由于牙买加处于极端贫困之中，而少数人却拥有大量财富，因此牙买加是前现代世界中迄今研究最不平等的地方。