Damascus 1900 Project

Dianshuo Zhang

November 2022

Introduction
Understanding the life quality in ancient societies has been a topic of interest to
many economic historians. Much comparative studies have shown at length the
difference in life qualities between major Chinese and European cities over the
past centuries. Few literature has been done on the standard of living in middle
eastern cities in the past. To that end, this paper attempts to study the quality
of life in the city of Damascus on 1900 by constructing a budget of subsistence
and comparing it to the wages of workers.

Theory
This project intends to set the basic poverty line based on the budget selected to
fulfill one’s basic needs. Based on the basic needs poverty line proposed by Allen
(2017), this budget is categorized in food, nonfood goods and rented housing.
The cost of food will be estimated through linear programming as proposed by
Allen (2017).

The food cost is solved based on the diet problem from Stigler (1945). The
problem solves for the minimum budget through a consumption choice of a list
of necessary foods subject to the constraint of satisfying the most basic
nutritional needs of an individual.The cost of the diet is the objective function:
X
cost = pi Fi (1)

where pi is the price of food i and Fi is the quantity of the food consumed.

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The nutritional constraints are a set of inequalities corresponding to different
nutrition required such as calorie or fat:
X
nij Fi ≤ Rj (2)

Each nutrition is summed up from all the foods consumed to satisfy Rj ,the
minimum required amount of nutrition j for a person. For example, nutrition j
per unit of food nij is multiplied with the quantity of food i consumed; this
process is repeated for all the other foods and whose results will be summed to
find the total intake of nutrition j for a person choosing the said budget.

Data
This paper mainly draws its data from a British diplomatic and consular report
on the trade of Damascus and Turkey on year 1900. The report includes the
market prices for a list of food and non-food items in Damascus, and an indi-
vidual chooses from these items when constructing his basic needs poverty line
budget. The currency used is Piastre in 1900 value and all weighing units are
converted into kilograms.

This specific report was chosen for this purpose due to its detailed account of
prices for various items essential for living. Moreover, this report shows the rise
in market prices for different items over a 12 year interval, showing the dynamic
of change in life quality. The currency and weighing units in this report are
also standardized and thus eases the process of conversion. This report can
be perceived as being produced with a fair level of statistical expertise due to
its original source as a British diplomatic and consular report. One criticism
could be leveled, however, on questioning the accuracy of the listed prices on
the report with respect to real prices experienced by people living in Damascus:
Are all these items available on the market? Is scarcity fully represented in
the pricing structure? Are there cheaper alternative ways for people to fulfill
their basic dietary requirements? For this paper, we presume these prices are
perfectly competitive and are homogeneous across all the markets in Damascus.
Following Allen’s (2017) method, this paper will explore diet cost based on the
least cost diets 1700 calories model, CPF model and the basic model.

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Least Cost Diet: 1700 Calories Model
The idea is simple: there is only one constraint for nutrition intake - 1700
calories per day. This condition is the minimum required for an individual to
live, work and raise children. The number 1700 calories per day is obtained as
the energy consumption of second decile from the bottom in poverty terms in
India. (Suryanarayana 2009) To employ this constraint in linear programming,
we obtain a minimum budget of 149 Piastres per person per year on food. Since
this only satisfies the minimum requirement, only bread is consumed: a total of
304.2 kg of bread is consumed per person annually.

Least Cost Diets: CPF Model

We attempt to construct a more favorable diet by adding requirements for prin-
cipal nutrients: calories, protein, and fat in linear programming. Specifically,
we follow Allen’s (2017) method of 2100 calories per day, 50 g of protein and
34 g of fat per person per day. This carries interesting implications for our re-
sults: the total food consumption is decreased from 304 kg to 300 kg while the
budget is increased from 149 to 161.6 piastres. We observe that, the increasing
requirement for nutrition necessitates the diversification of food consumed, and
hence decreases the total quantity of bread consumption from 304.2 kg to 294.1
kg. The individual also starts to consume some quantity of cheese.

Least Cost Diets: Basic Model

The diet calculated in the CPF model, however, exposes individuals to many
health deficiencies. Four of them are most common and serious. Insufficient
niacin causes Pellagra, shortage of vitamin B1 induces beri-beri,inadequeate
vitamin C to scurvy and a combination of the lack of iron, thiamine or folate re-
sult in anemia. (Allen 2017) The CPF diet provides 38.1 kg of protein, 109% in
excess of what is required. Since B12 comes entirely from the animal products,
the CPF model supplies no B12. However, the CPF diet satisfies the nutritional
requirement for iron, folate, B1 and niacin. Particularly, for B1 and niacin, the
diet provides more than 200 % of the amount required.

Next, we move to include more fundamental nutrition in the dietary require-

ments to account for the deficiency in CDF diet: we add extra requirements for
iron, B12, folate B1, niacin and Vitamin C in the linear programming problem

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and recalculate the budget.

Diet (in KG)

Food Items 1700 Calories Model CPF Model Basic Model Basic Model (no Vitamin C)
eggs 0 0 0 0
Beef 0 0 0 0
Poultry 0 0 25.7 (5.35%) 43.7 (13.8%)
Fish 0 0 2.4 (0.49%) 0
Potatoes 0 0 253.5 (52%) 0
tomatoes 0 0 0 0
cabbages 0 0 0 0
bread 304.2 (100%) 294.1 (97.9%) 184 (38.4%) 268.8 (84.9%)
flour 0 0 0 0
ghee 0 0 0 0
sugar 0 0 0 0
cheese 0 6.26 (2.1%) 13.7 (2.87%) 4.2 (1.3%)
rice 0 0 0 0
mutton 0 0 0 0

Table 1: Food Consumption Under Different Models

note : the percentages represent the proportion of a specific food item in respect to the total
food consumed

Imposing more nutrition constraints creates significant impact on the food

consumption of an individual. The total consumption of food has increased
from 300 kg to 479 kg annually, signalling more nutrition intake. An individual
further diversifies his diet and now consumes both poultry and fish. The con-
sumption for cheese increases from 6.26 kg to 13.7 kg. Much of the nutrition is
provided by potatoes, a cost-effective food choice.

Many of the newly introduced constraints in the basic model are non-binding,
so we focus our attention on B12 and vitamin C, the only two binding con-
straints. We start by relaxing the constraint for Vitamin C. The result is sur-
prising: the total amount of food consumed dropped to 316 kg and fish and
potatoes are no longer consumed. The consumption of poultry is increased
from 25.7 kg to 43.7 kg and that for bread has increased from 184 kg to 268.8
kg. Cheese consumption is reduced to 4.2 kg. Referencing the nutrition table
for each foods gives us some insights: Vitamin C is only supplied in fish and
potatoes. This explains the change in diet choices. The shortage of B12 in the
CPF model is fulfilled by increasing consumption of poultry. This result sug-
gests that Vitamin C is comparatively the most expensive nutrition to acquire.

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 In Table 1. the changing percentage of food items for different models re-
veals different value of foods. Bread is a typical inferior good since people tend
to consume much less of it as they attempt to improve their diet. All the ani-
mal products are normal goods since people are willing to consume increasing
amount as they acquire more nutrition for their diet. Potatoes are only acquired
to fulfill the requirement for Vitamin C. This shows an important insight in the
food consumption of different welfare levels: higher welfare does not necessar-
ily signify an increase in the quantity of food consumption so much so as the
diversification of food items. In this case, the increase in income results in the
further decline of bread consumption and the rising demand for animals prod-
ucts as well as other vegetables such as tomatoes or cabbages.

The results produced by the basic model is worthy of inspection. The ab-
solute lack of consumption for other non-meat products such as cabbages and
tomatoes, as well as cheese paints a rational yet monotone picture of the daily
lives of the people: they might consume some less cost-effective food items
driven by need of taste and sacrifice some of their nutrition requirements. Allen
(2017) discusses these issues at length and concludes that linear programming
poverty line is ”generous enough to allow for a small accommodation of habit
or variety in diet”.

Shortcut Diet
To compare, we also constructed a much simpler version of diet consumption
based on a general assumption: one consumes, on average, 185 kg of rice, 20 kg
of beans, 5 kg of fish and 3 kg of ghee to satisfy his nutrition requirements.

Non-Food Consumption
Besides food cost, the poverty budget should include other costs. This essay
constructs a non-food consumption budget based on the design of Allen (2017):
the budget is limited to housing, fuel, lighting, clothing, and soap1 . The bud-
get is intentionally set at an austere level such that costs of medical care and
1 The soap requirement is set arbitrarily at 1.3 kg per year

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education are not included.

We compute the basic requirements of clothing, fuel and lighting based on

climate. Allen (2017) points out that cold climate necessitates more energy for
heating while such need is oblivious to people in hot climate, hence the non-
food costs should be depended on its respective climate conditions. Hence, we
assumed that the energy required is used to maintain indoor temperature at a
desirable level. Allen (2017) explains the mechanism of this method in detail.
To calculate, we assume that the rooms are heated to a temperature of 15 de-
grees Celsius. The total sum of the difference between the outside temperature
and the internal temperature is measured as ”heating degree of days”. The
function of total energy requirement is a function of ”heating degree of days”
and its result will remain if it’s larger than the 1.6 million BTUs proposed by
the Millennium Development energy poverty line. Otherwise, 1.6 million BTUs
is adopted.

We did not use linear programming for the non-food costs. We simply pick
the cheapest source for each energy requirement given the prices in Damascus.
As a result, we expect a total consumption of 491 Piastres for non-food items.

Welfare Ratio
We use the idea of welfare ratio to establish a real wage index. A welfare ratio
of one means that a labourer working full time just makes enough to support his
family at subsistence level. Any number below one means either the reduction
of family size or increasing the days worked. The welfare ratio formula is as
follows:
W elf are Ratio = annual f amily income ÷ annual poverty line cost f or f amily,
(3)

where the annual family income is calculated as such 2 :

Annualf amilyincome = dailywagerate · daysworkedinaf ullyear (4)

The annual poverty line cost is calculated as 3 :

2 For our calculation, we typically assume a 250 working days annually
3 We assume a three-people family

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 Annual poverty line cost f or a f amily = annual poverty line cost per person
· people per f amily
(5)

A mason earns 15 piastres per day while an unskilled labor makes 7 piastres
per day in 1900 Damascus. We first assume a typical four-people family. Our
calculation shows that the welfare ratios are, respectively 1.18 and 0.55. We ex-
pect a higher level for sustained survival for an unskilled laborer. Considering
that working days cannot be expected to increase substantially due to health
implications or market demand, we decrease the family members for unskilled
laborer to three and repeat the calculation. The results show a big improvement
of welfare ratio: 73.7% of the amount required to sustain the subsistence of his
family is satisfied. This falls short of the basic poverty line required.

The results show that a mason in Damascus in 1900 lives above the sub-
sistence level. He could thus choose to either improve his diet or his housing
conditions. An unskilled labour, on the other hand, is able to support his family
of three people to a decent 73.7% of the basic poverty line.

Diet (in KG)

Food Items 1900 1906 1911
eggs 0 0 0
Beef 0 0 0
Poultry 25.7 0
Fish 2.36 16.07 16.07
Potatoes 253.5 249.18 249.18
tomatoes 0 0 0
cabbages 0 0 0
bread 184 195.02 195.02
flour 0 0 0
ghee 0 0 0
sugar 0 0 0
cheese 13.75 12.07 12.07
rice 0 0 0
mutton 0 0 0
Total food cost 262.8 337.5 421.98

Table 2: Basic Model Diet in Different Years

Comparing to the price statistics in 1906 and 1911, we notice that the food
prices as well as the wages at 1900 are at a low level due to a particularly

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bad year for crops. We use linear programming to compute the diet for year
1906 and 1911 with their respective prices. The result shows rising total food
costs. The structure of the diet remains relatively unchanged except for a shift
from poultry to more fish consumption from 1900 to 1906. This is caused by
the equivalence of price for poultry and fish on 1906 - a solution from linear
programming simply shifts the weight in poultry to fish as it contains more
nutrition. The price of all non-food items have also increased. Notably, the rise
in energy prices far exceeds the rise in food prices: we observe around 10-15%
rise in food prices while 35-40% increase in energy prices. The reason for which
is worthy of further study.

Job Type 1900 1906 1911

mason 15 20-25 30-35
unskilled labour 7 12 15

Table 3: Wages By Year

The wages increase at a faster speed than food prices. Year to year rise in
wages averages at 47.5% while the average increase for total food price is 26.7%.
Although the reason for the discrepancy of growth between wages and food price
is unknown, it shows a clear sign that the living quality had improved. This
is proven in the welfare ratios. We use the same method to calculate food and
non-food cost for year 1906 and 1911 and deduce the welfare ratios. In 1906, a
mason makes 1.49 and a laborer makes 0.79 times basic poverty line for a family
of four. The same numbers in 1911 are, respectively, 1.56 and 0.72.

It is hard to develop a accurate sense of understanding to the actual living

standard of the people in Damascus at the beginning of the twentieth century
without understanding the reason behind the growth of general prices and wages.
However, based on the welfare ratios for year 1906 and 1911, we can conclude
that a mason can generally earn enough income to cover the basic needs of a
family of four with certain surplus and a laborer could provide sufficiently for a
family of three should he chooses to have one child instead of two.

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Comparison With Other Cities
The living standards in Damascus in year 1900 situates at a low level in compar-
ison with other countries. Allen (2011) shows a clear divergence of living stan-
dards between industrialized and non-industrialized nations in the nineteenth
century. Cities in industrialized nations such as London or Leipzig typically
present a welfare ratio more than five while cities in non-industrialized nations
such as Beijing and Tokyo generate welfare ratio around two. Damascus’ level
of 0.8 situates at the lower end of the non-industrialized cities and is at the level
comparable with Bengal.

Since 1900, levels of welfare ratio presents a trend of decline for major cities
in both Europe and Asia. Advanced economies such as Leipzig and London
maintains a welfare ratio of more than 5 while non-industrialized economies see
the most decline in Chinese cities to levels around 1 and Bengal rising to the
level around 2. This trend stops at around year 1911 and welfare ratio bounces
back. In this period of decline, the welfare ratio of Damascus’ mason and la-
borer surges as the upper-medium level amongst the non-industrialized cities.
We can conclude that in this period the people in Damascus generally enjoy a
higher standard of living than people from much other non-industrialized cities.

Bibliography
• Allen, Robert C. “Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire.”
American Economic Review, vol. 107, no. 12, 2017, pp. 3690–3721.,
doi:10.1257/aer.20161080.

• ALLEN, ROBERT C., et al. “Wages, Prices, and Living Standards in

China, 1738–1925: In Comparison with Europe, Japan, and India.” The
Economic History Review, vol. 64, no. s1, 2011, pp. 8–38., doi:10.1111/j.1468-
0289.2010.00515.x.

• No. 5016 Annual Series. Diplomatic and Consular Reports.Turkey. Re-

port for the year 1911 on the trade of Damascus. (Edited at the Foreign
Office and the Board of Trade. Reference to previous report, Annual Series
No. 4802.)