Class Structure and Inequality during the Industrial Revolution: Lessons from England’s Social Tables, 1688-1867

Robert Allen ()
Additional contact information
Robert Allen: Division of Social Science

No 20170002, Working Papers from New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science

Abstract: This paper measures the size and incomes of six major social classes across the Industrial Revolution using social tables for England and Wales in 1688, 1759, 1798, 1846, and 1867. Lindert and Williamson famously revised these tables, and this paper extends their work in three directions: First, servants are removed from middle and upper class households in the tables of King, Massie, and Colquhoun and tallied separately. Second, estimates are made for the same tables of the number and incomes of women and children employed in the various occupations, and, third, incomes are broken down into rents, profits, and employment income. These extensions to the tables allow variables to be computed that can be checked against independent estimates as a validation exercise. The tables are retabulated in a standardized set of six social groups to highlight the changing structure of society across the industrial revolution. Gini coefficients are computed from the social tables to measure inequality. These measures confirm that Britain traversed a ‘Kuznets curve’ in this period. Changes in overall inequality are related to the changing fortunes of the major social classes.

Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2017-05, Revised 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://nyuad.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyuad/academics/ ... papers/2017/0002.pdf First version, 2017 (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:nad:wpaper:20170002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alizeh Batra ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).