Respectable standards of living: the alternative lens of maintenance costs, Britain 1270-1860

Jane Humphries

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: This paper argues that in all societies there is considerable agreement about the goods and services needed to provide a respectable standard of living and that this can be measured by what it cost to maintain people of good standing. Such a measure allows for the inclusion of two neglected components of living costs: first, changes in the composition and quality of consumption, as opposed to concentrating on the price of a fixed consumption basket; and second, the value of the household services required to turn commodities into livings. More than 4400 observations, drawn mainly from diverse primary sources, trace levels and trends in maintenance costs for Britain, 1270-1860. These can be compared with conventional cost of living indicators to offer a complementary perspective that accommodates aspirational consumption and the input of household labour. The struggle to support families at respectable standards emerges as driving industriousness and motivating prudence among a class that played a major role in economic development. More speculatively, estimates of the time necessary to turn material goods into livings is then combined with evidence on women’s wages to evaluate the contribution of unpaid domestic labour to total income.

Keywords: cost-of-living; consumption; welfare; respectability; domestic labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B54 N00 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119284/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:119284

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History LSE, Dept. of Economic History Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. ().