ABSTRACT
Improvements in grain supply, more effective poor relief and more efficient transport and marketing systems shifted the balance from a society which, as in the 1690s, was unable to cope with bad harvests to one which could surmount such obstacles without major difficulties. Webster's census of 1755 suggests that Scotland's population at this time was growing by around 0.4 per cent per annum, a rate perhaps twice that of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This was the start of what has been called the 'mortality transition' with an improvement in the mortality of infants and children. Following European trends death rates in Scotland fell from around 35 per 1,000 before 1755 to under 30 per 1,000 by the 1790s. This was higher than in England but it represented a significant improvement. Population growth, which may have begun to quicken from the 1740s, was starting to affect grain prices by the 1760s. Between 1755 and 1801 the average rate of growth was around 0.6 per cent per annum, less than half that of England. This was fast enough to generate increased demand at home and to increase the supply of labour but not rapid enough to outstrip economic growth.
