Scared to Be Poor: vulnerability and Poverty in Great Britain at the Beginning of the 20th century

Federica Di Battista

Rivista di storia economica, 2016, issue 2, 269-299

Abstract: This work explores the determinants of poverty in Edwardian Britain. We use a new household budget sample collected between 1900 and 1914 to understand what role vulnerability played in determining poverty and undernutrition. First, using a probit model we find that due to perceived risk on one hand, and to social norms on the other, families purchased insurance schemes as a strategy to cope with uncertainty. Second, using recursive mixed process estimation, we find that the decision to insure caused a reallocation from food to precautionary expenditures, which led to a significant reduction in calorie availability.

Keywords: Poverty; Vulnerability; Insurance; Great Britain; 1900-1914. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mul:jrkmxm:doi:10.1410/84065:y:2016:i:2:p:269-299

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