ABSTRACT
A constantly expanding labour supply was regarded during most of the nineteenth century as in the nature of things. The size and composition of the British population has been suggested as one explanation of an allegedly unsatisfactory economic performance. Since the early 1950s, the prosperity of world trade and the continued international surplus of most primary products has enabled economists to ignore the effect of population size on terms of trade, and to treat the correction of the balance of payments simply as an aspect of the problem of improving British industrial productivity. The importance given to the ‘residual’ in its various aspects has not diverted attention from the subject of the supply of labour, however, but rather shifted emphasis from the question of quantity to that of quality. To attempt to estimate the role of labour in promoting economic growth since 1918 is thus necessarily to tread upon ground mined by opposing theorists.
