Contrasting Consumption: Household Income and Living Standards in the Netherlands and Java, 1870–1940

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk ()
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Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk: Utrecht University

Chapter 5 in Women, Work and Colonialism in the Netherlands and Java, 2019, pp 165-222 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter aims to bring together developments in living standardsliving standards in the Netherlands and Java by highlighting the role of the contribution of women and childrenchildren to householdhousehold incomeincome and by scrutinising changing consumptionconsumption patterns. While some historians have hinted at connectionsconnections between the standard of livingliving standards in metropole and colony, few studies to date have based such assumptions on firm empirical evidence. Moreover, changes in consumption patterns as well as in household incomeincome household (as opposed to male wageswages) have seldom been systematically integrated into debates on living standards. Bringing in consumptionconsumption as well as the earningsincome of women and childrenchildren is highly relevant, because it gives a much more accurate picture of household income and thus of the standard of livingliving standards. Furthermore, investigating colonial connectionsconnections in combination with a move away from an exclusive focus on male wageincome wage incomesincome offers an important new impulse to the wider debate on living standardsliving standards in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-10528-0_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-10528-0_5

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