Using Housing Quality to Track Change in the Standard of Living and Poverty for Seventeenth-Century London

William C. Baer

Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2014, vol. 47, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: Housing quality is an important component of the standard of living, touching on aspects usually ignored in efforts to measure it, in part because housing quality itself is difficult to measure--especially over time. There are choices over inputs versus outputs for quality, and over objectively versus subjectively determined evaluations of it. Historians must also cope with today's versus yesteryear's beliefs about housing quality and standards. Descriptions of London's housing quality over the seventeenth century and changes in rents show that housing improved across income groups. Housing poverty apparently declined in percentage but grew in absolute numbers. Higher incomes, better-built housing, and processes of the housing market all contributed, including housing/household "filtering"--a unique process of the housing market whose London aspects others have reported but never placed in a coherent account.

Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2013.800801

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