Throughout European history famines have generally been followed by periods of rising wages, because when a labor force is diminished, workers are more valuable in accordance with the law of supply and demand
The Irish potato famine of the 1840s is an exception; it resulted in the death or emigration of half of Ireland' s population, but there was no significant rise in the average wages in Ireland in the following decade
England, which had political control of Ireland, legislated artificially low wages to provide English-owned industry and agriculture in Ireland with cheap labor.