Sunday 17 August 2014

Austrian beer output per head per province in 1888

Another nifty title, don't you think?

I've managed to spin yet more thread from that tangled clump of numbers. This time adding population figures to come up with figures for beer output per head of population. I've found it very instructive.

I'm going to repeat the map of Autro-Hungarian provinces as otherwise the table won't much sense to most of you. Me, I'm becoming pointlessly familiar with the administrative divisions of the Empire.


Now the numbers:

Austrian beer output per head per province in 1888
Province population beer output litres/head
Salzburg 169,500 299,968 176.97
Upper Austria 773,700 946,991 122.40
Lower Austria 2,552,400 2,609,744 102.25
Bohemia 5,757,800 5,487,030 95.30
Styria 1,261,000 660,141 52.35
Silesia 590,500 306,074 51.83
Moravia 2,212,000 1,085,076 49.05
Carinthia 357,300 141,212 39.52
Tirol und Vorarlberg 916,200 266,871 29.13
Galicia 6,370,800 708,373 11.12
Carniola 498,000 49,225 9.88
Bukovina 627,900 58,806 9.37
Hungary and Siebenbergen 14,715,900 490,831 3.34
Croatia and Slavonia 2,065,900 10,962 0.53
Kustenland 680,200 1,054 0.15
total Austria 41,466,600 13,142,429 31.69

Salzburg is the unexpected winner. Not because its beer output was huge, but because its population was small. The converse was true of Bohemia: it produced easily the most beer, but also had one of the largest populations. Something I noticed: the population of the Czech Republic is now scarcely great than in 1888. Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia come to about 8.5 million. The current population is about 10 million.

You can see beer production was ridiculously concentrated in the top left hand corner of the Empire. Basically the areas with a majority Czech- or German-speaking population. Not a shock, really, but it's always nice to have hard evidence.

2 comments:

Joe said...

Sir, have you looked at per capita income (if available) by region vs beer production and consumption? I am thinking there may have been some undocumented brewers in the less affluent areas.
Thank you,
Joe wood

Jan said...

About the Czech population - it seems there was no big growth, because after 1945 3 million german speakers were dispelled and they or their descendants now live in Germany...