Transition to Modern Growth: the Role of Technological Progress and Adult Mortality

This paper presents a model inspired to the Unified Growth Theory, where reductions in adult mortality, together with improvements in technological progress, are the deep causes of the transition from a Traditional (Malthusian) Regime to a Pre-modern Regime with accumulation of only fixed capital, and finally, to a Modern Regime, with the joint accumulation of fixed and human capital. A calibrated version of the model is able to reproduce the dynamics of UK economy in the period 1541-1914, both matching the periods of transition and the pattern of main macroeconomic variables. UK growth appears mainly due to technological progress before the half of nineteen century, while after the decline in adult mortality and factors accumulation played the major role. Finally, fertility decline along the nineteen century has only a marginal impact on growth because is more than balanced by the longer adult survival.