Abstract
Since the spread of industrialization, which began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, many countries took off on a development path leading to modern economic growth. The process of modernization resulted in a 16-fold increase in the standard of living of the average world citizen. Productivity growth and structural change, however, was characterized by uneven development, within and across nations. This chapter discusses the various ways in which welfare growth is measured and how the different aspects of quality of life such as inequality, health and leisure have developed in the long run. The chapter closes with a discussion of an historical index of human development across world regions since 1870. It conjectures that social indicators are becoming more dependent again on income growth, in contrast to the experience of the first half of the twentieth century.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
For a recent overview of industrialization in the ‘periphery’ see Bénétrix et al. (2012).
- 2.
See for a similar but less detailed description Fourastié 1960, 88 and 124–134, pointing at changes in relative prices of products and the differential effects on real comes for the rich and poor.
- 3.
Of course the same analysis can be made across countries for one particular year as is being done in the various rounds of the International Comparisons Project for the post-WW II period, see Kravis and Lipsey 1991.
- 4.
See also Crafts on the measurement of the cost of living with new goods: Crafts 2007, 13–14.
- 5.
The Columbian Exchange has been used as a broader concept including the transmission of diseases, ideas and populations (Nunn and Qian 2010, 167).
- 6.
Crafts 1997, 317. For the period 1870–1913 it was 0.5脈%, for 1950–1973 0.4脈% and for 1973–1992 0.5脈%.
- 7.
- 8.
Daly and Cobb脈(1989) included in their Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare inequality and depletion of non-renewables. This has a negative effect on the index because from the 1970s inequality and environmental depletion has increased in a lot of western countries. Recently Jones and Klenow have proposed an alternative to GDP by defining a nation’s flow of welfare as a consumption equivalent. Their welfare indicator combines data on consumption, inequality, leisure, and mortality in an expected utility framework. These approaches all share the general notion of diminishing returns to economic growth (Jones and Klenow 2010).
- 9.
The Physical Quality of Life Index introduced by Morris (1979) is a weighted index of infant mortality, literacy rates and life expectation at age one (infant survival rate). Such estimates are necessarily rough and have foremost a diagnostic value, but they can be extremely helpful for periods and countries when other indicators are not available. For a historical PQLI on Victorian Britain see Jordan (1993), see Ostroot and Snyder (1996) for a historical index on France.
- 10.
- 11.
This argument is not the same as the much repeated claim that GDP is a bad metaphor of wellbeing for the reason that it also reflects spending on negative externalities, to avoid damage caused elsewhere in the economy.
- 12.
Özmucur and Pamuk (2002) found a long-term upward trend in Ottoman real wages since 1600 of 0.3脈% per year, pointing at a modest trend for productivity increases, ascribed to learning-by-doing and diffusion of new technology from West Europe. Nevertheless, also Ottoman wages were in the same league as South Europe, that is, lower than 50脈% of Northwest Europe. Cvrcek calculated levels of welfare ratios for the Habsburg Empire 1827–1910. Living standards only started to rise in the second half of the nineteenth century and remained at much lower levels than those of British farm workers, let alone London construction workers (Cvrcek 2013).
- 13.
See Baten et al. (2010) for an integrative narrative of living standards and human capital in China in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Human capital in China and Japan measured by literacy rates were comparatively high (Gupta and Ma 2010, 275). For a study of prices and wages in Spanish Latin America between the Conquest and Independence see Arroyo Abad et al. (2012). New evidence from real wages in British Africa between 1880 and 1965 is given by Frankema and van Waijenburg (2012).
- 14.
See also Clark and van der Werff who find no proof of intensification of work input per capita and therefore question the idea of an “industrious revolution” (1998, 830).
- 15.
See Crafts and Mills (1994) for an econometric analysis of trends in British real wages between 1750 and 1913.
- 16.
See Humphries (2013) for a recent critique on the high wage interpretation of British industrialization.
- 17.
Huck stresses also that outcomes are sensitive to distribution of resources in a society. For families that are on the bare bones minimum, losing a portion of their resources will lead to a worsening of their health status that is not exactly mirrored by the groups who gain. So, the effect of income on biological results/outcomes is not linear, and the movement in the mean outcome of the distribution may not be representative for what really is happening (Huck 1995). See also Mokyr (1988, 87) who uses a proxy implied by consumption of some key commodities like sugar, tea, tobacco, and coffee. The proxy variable remains practically unchanged before the late 1840s.
- 18.
For an extensive overview of this debate see Komlos (2012).
- 19.
A similar point about the decline on the quality of Britain’s work force and a poor productivity performance in the late nineteenth century has been made by Allen (2013, 9).
- 20.
Ewert combined height trends from Bavaria (Baten 1999) with new estimates of Wuertemberg and Saxony and found declining heights for birth cohorts 1770–1849 during early industrialization in Germany. The biological standard of living declined, the reason for this being a mix of relatively bad climatic conditions, rising food prices (partly because of population pressure) and falling real incomes leading to a nutritional crisis, in particular in Saxony where there was less self-sufficiency because of urbanization (Ewert 2006, 82).
- 21.
- 22.
See Logan (2006) for an elaboration of the differences in child labor between British and American families. Child labor in the United States was less extensive than on the Continent during the nineteenth century. See also the analysis of Nardinelli (1990), which is based on the new household economics.
- 23.
Likewise Gratton has found that American industrialization has not impoverished the elderly. On average the elderly fared relatively well by contemporary standards, and their standard of living improved fast during the early twentieth century (Gratton 1996, 57).
- 24.
- 25.
Beckerman makes a distinction between time not spent in the market measured as natural hours versus effective hours. Effective hours allows for productivity increases in the enjoyment of leisure or performance of non-market work (Beckerman 1980, 47). This problem was already mentioned by Nordhaus and Tobin (1973, 554): “…One conceptual issue is how to count leisure in estimating the absolute increments of total consumption between two dates. The contribution of leisure is obviously greater if technical progress is assumed to have augmented leisure time than if an hour of leisure is assumed always to be the same hour”.
- 26.
Not only new durable products were labor saving, but also better provisions like central water supply. This saved probably more household labor than the washing machine (Leonard and Ljungberg 2010, 123).
- 27.
See also Nafziger and Lindert on Russian inequality before the revolution. They show that in the early twentieth century Russia was not exceptionally unequal. Presently Brazil, China, the United States, and Russia itself are more unequal than Tsarist Russia. (2012, 25).
- 28.
In Italy there is no evidence of an increase in inequality during the first phase of industrialization between 1896 and 1913. An important reason for this is the emigration of laborers from the South to the North and to the Americas (Rossi et al. 2001, 922).
- 29.
Between 1900 and 1950 growth per capita was about 1.0脈%, against a long term rate of 1.7 between 1870 and 2000. See Maddison 2006.
References
Aguiar, M., & Hurst, E. (2007). Measuring trends in leisure: The allocation of time over five decades. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(3), 969–1006.
Allen, R. C. (2001). The great divergence in European wages and prices from the middle ages to the first world War. Explorations in Economic History, 38(4), 441–447.
Allen, R. C. (2003). Progress and poverty in early modern Europe. The Economic History Review, 56(3), 403–443.
Allen, R. C. (2007). Pessimism preserved: Real wages in the British industrial revolution.脈Economics Series Working Paper 314. University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
Allen, R. C. (2009). Engels’ pause: Technical change, capital accumulation, and inequality in the British industrial revolution. Explorations in Economic History, 46(4), 418–435.
Allen, R. C. (2013). The high wage economy and the industrial revolution: A restatement . Oxford University Economic and Social History Series, 115. Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Allen, R. C., Bassino, J.-P., Ma, D., Moll-Murata, C., & van Zanden, J. L. (2011). Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: In comparison with Europe, Japan and India. The Economic History Review, 64(1), 8–38.
Angeles, L. (2008). GDP per capita or real wages? Making sense of conflicting views on pre-industrial Europe. Explorations in Economic History, 45(2), 147–163.
Arroyo Abad, L., Davies, L., & van Zanden, J. L. (2012). Between conquest and independence: Real wages and demographic change in Spanish America, 1530–1820. Explorations in Economic History, 49, 149–166.
Ashenfelter, O. (2012). Comparing real wage rates. American Economic Review, 102(2), 1–26.
Astorga, P., Berges, A. R., & Fitzgerald, V. (2005). The standard of living in Latin America during the twentieth century. The Economic History Review, 58(4), 765–796.
Baten, J. (1999). Ernährung und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Bayern, 1730–1880. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Baten, J., Ma, D., Morgan, S., & Wang, Q. (2010). Evolution of living standards and human capital in China in the 18-20th centuries: Evidences from real wages, age-heaping, and anthropometrics. Explorations in Economic History, 47, 347–359.
Baumol, W. J., Blackman, S. A. B., & Wolff, E. N. (1989). Productivity and American leadership: The long view. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Beckerman, W. (1980). Comparative growth rates of “measurable economic welfare”: Some experimental calculations. In R. C. O. Matthews (Ed.), Economic growth and resources (Vol. II, pp. 36–59). London: Macmillan.
Bekaert, G. (1991). Caloric consumption in industrializing Belgium. The Journal of Economic History, 51(3), 633–655.
Bénétrix, A., O’Rourke, K., & Williamson, J. F. (2012). The spread of manufacturing to the poor periphery 1870–2007 (NBER Working Paper 18221). Cambridge MA: NBER.
Bolt, J., & van Zanden, J. L. (2014). The Maddison project. Collaborative research on historical national accounts. Economic History Review, 67, 627–651.
Bourguignon, F., & Morrisson, C. (2002). Inequality among world citizens: 1820–1992. American Economic Review, 92, 727–744.
Bowden, S., & Offer, A. (1994). Household appliances and the use of time: The United States and Britain since the 1920s. The Economic History Review, 47(4), 725–748.
Broadberry, S. N., & Burhop, C. (2010). Real wages and labor productivity in Britain and Germany, 1871–1938: A unified approach to the international comparison of living standards. The Journal of Economic History, 70(2), 400–427.
Broadberry, S. N., & Gupta, B. (2006). The early modern great divergence: Wages, prices and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800. The Economic History Review, 59, 2–31.
Broadberry, S., Campbell, B. M. S., & van Leeuwen, B. (2013). When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851. Explorations in Economic History, 50(1), 16–27.
Brown, J. C. (1990). The condition of England and the standard of living: Cotton textiles in the Northwest, 1806–1850. The Journal of Economic History, 50(3), 591–614.
Church, R. (2000). Advertising consumer goods in nineteenth-century Britain reinterpretations. The Economic History Review, 53(4), 621–645.
Cinnirella, F. (2008). Optimists or pessimists? A reconsideration of nutritional status in Britain, 1740–1865. European Review of Economic History, 12(3), 325–354.
Clark, G. (2001). Farm wages and living standards in the industrial revolution: England, 1670–1869. The Economic History Review, 54(3), 477–505.
Clark, G. (2013). 1381 and the Malthus delusion. Explorations in Economic History, 50(1), 4–15.
Clark, G., & van der Werf, Y. (1998). Work in progress? The industrious revolution. The Journal of Economic History, 58(3), 830–843.
Costa, D. L., & Steckel, R. H. (1997). Long-term trends in health, welfare, and economic growth in the United States. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 47–90). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cowan, R. S. (1983). More work for mother. The ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. New York: Basic Books.
Crafts, N. F. R. (1997). Some dimensions of the ‘quality of life’ during the British industrial revolution. The Economic History Review, 50(4), 617–639.
Crafts, N. F. R. (2002). The human development index, 1870–1999: Some revised estimates. European Review of Economic History, 6(3), 395–405.
Crafts, N. F. R. (2007). Living standards. In N. F. R. Crafts, I. Gazeley, & A. Newell (Eds.), Work and pay in the 20th century Britain (pp. 11–34). New York: Oxford University Press.
Crafts, N. F. R., & Mills, T. C. (1994). Trends in real wages in Britain, 1750–1913. Explorations in Economic History, 31(2), 176–194.
Cunningham, H. (2000). The decline of child labour: Labour markets and family economies in Europe and North America since 1830. The Economic History Review, 53(3), 409–428.
Cvrcek, T. (2013). Wages, prices, and living standards in the Habsburg empire, 1827–1910. The Journal of Economic History, 73(1), 1–37.
Daly, H., & Cobb, J. (1989). For the common good: Redirecting the economy towards community, the environment, and a sustainable future. London: Green Print.
de Vries, J. (1994). The industrial revolution and the industrious revolution. The Journal of Economic History, 54(2), 249–270.
de Vries, J., & van der Woude, A. (1997). The first modern economy (Success, failure and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DeLong, J. B. (2000). Cornucopia: The pace of economic growth in the twentieth century (NBER Working Paper, 7602). Cambridge MA: NBER.
Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In P. David & M. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz. New York: Academic.
Easterlin, R. A. (2000). The worldwide standard of living since 1800. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(1), 7–26.
Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: Towards a unified theory. The Economic Journal, 111, 465–484.
Engerman, S. L. (1997). The standard of living debate in international perspective: Measures and indicators. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 17–46). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ewert, U. C. (2006). The biological standard of living on the decline: Episodes from Germany during early industrialization. European Review of Economic History, 10(1), 51–88.
Feinstein, C. H. (1998). Pessimism perpetuated: Real wages and the standard of living in Britain during and after the industrial revolution. The Journal of Economic History, 58(3), 625–658.
Ferrie, J. P., & Troesken, W. (2008). Water and Chicago’s mortality transition, 1850–1925. Explorations in Economic History, 45(1), 1–16.
Floud, R., & Harris, B. (1997). Health, height, and welfare: Britain, 1700–1980. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 91–126). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Floud, R., Wachter, K., & Gregory, A. (1990). Height, health and history: Nutritional status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fogel, R. W. (1994). Economic growth, population theory, and physiology: The bearing of long-term processes on the making of economic policy. American Economic Review, 84, 369–395.
Fogel, R. W. (2004). The escape from hunger and premature death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the third world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fourastié, J. (1960). The causes of wealth. Glencoe: Free Press.
Frankema, E., & van Waijenburg, M. (2012). Structural impediments to African growth? New evidence from real wages in British Africa, 1880–1965. The Journal of Economic History, 72(4), 895–926.
Gallman, R. E., & Wallis, J. J. (1992). Introduction. In R. E. Gallman & J. J. Wallis (Eds.), American economic growth and standards of living before the civil war (pp. 1–18). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gratton, B. (1996). The poverty of impoverishment theory: The economic well-being of the elderly, 1890–1950. The Journal of Economic History, 56(1), 39–61.
Gupta, B., & Ma, D. (2010). Europe in Asia minor: The great divergence. In S. Broadberry & K. H. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe: Volume 1, 1700–1870 (pp. 264–287). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hausman, J. (1999). Cellular telephone, new products, and the CPI. Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 17(2), 188–194.
Hersh, J., & Voth, H.-J. (2009). Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the rise of European living standards after 1492 (CEPR Discussion Papers 7386).脈London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Hickson, K. J. (2009a). The contribution of increased life expectancy to economic development in twentieth century Japan. Journal of Asian Economics, 20, 489–504.
Hickson, K. J. (2009b). The value of tuberculosis elimination and progress in tuberculosis control in twentieth-century England and Wales. International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 13(9), 1061–1067.
Hoffman, P. T., Jacks, D. S., Levin, P. A., & Lindert, P. H. (2002). Real inequality in Europe since 1500. The Journal of Economic History, 62(2), 322–355.
Honda, G. (1997). Differential structure, differential health: Industrialization in Japan, 1868–1940. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 251–284). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Horrell, S., & Humphries, J. (1992). Old questions, new data, and alternative perspectives: Families’ living standards in the industrial revolution. The Journal of Economic History, 52(4), 849–880.
Huberman, M. (2004). Working hours of the world unite? New international evidence of worktime, 1870–1913. The Journal of Economic History, 64(4), 964–1001.
Huck, P. (1995). Infant mortality and living standards of English workers during the industrial revolution. The Journal of Economic History, 55(3), 528–550.
Humphries, J. (2013). The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective: A critique of the high wage economy interpretation of the British industrial revolution. The Economic History Review, 66(3), 693–714.
Johnson, P., & Nicholas, S. (1997). Health and welfare of women in the United Kingdom, 1785–1920. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 201–250). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jones, C. I., & Klenow, P. J. (2010). Beyond GDP? Welfare across countries and time (NBER Working Paper Series, 16352). Cambridge MA: NBER.
Jordan, T. E. (1993). “L’Homme Moyen”: Estimating the quality of life for British adults, 1815–1914, an index. Social Indicators Research, 28(2), 193–203.
Komlos, J. (1987). The height and weight of west point cadets: Dietary change in antebellum America. The Journal of Economic History, 47(4), 897–927.
Komlos, J. (2012). A three-decade “Kuhnian” history of the antebellum puzzle: Explaining the shrinking of the US population at the onset of modern economic growth (Discussion Papers in Economics 2012–10).脈Münich: Department of Economics, University of Münich.
Kravis, I. B., & Lipsey, R. E. (1991). The international comparison program: Current status and problems. In P. E. Hooper & J. D. Richardson (Eds.), International economic transactions: Issues in measurement and empirical research (pp. 437–464). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuznets, S. (1952). Long-term changes in national income of the United States since 1870. In S. Kuznets (Ed.), Income and wealth of the United States: Trends and structure (pp. 29–241). Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes.
Kuznets, S. (1955). Economic growth and income inequality. American Economic Review, 45, 1–28.
Land, K. C. (1983). Social indicators. Annual Review of Sociology, 9, 1–26.
Leonard, C., & Ljungberg, J. (2010). Population and living standards, 1870–1914. In S. Broadberry & K. H. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe: Volume 2, 1870 to the present (pp. 108–132). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lindert, P. H. (1994). The rise of social spending, 1880–1930. Explorations in Economic History, 31, 1–37.
Lindert, P. H., & Williamson, J. G. (1983). English workers’ living standards during the industrial revolution: A new look. The Economic History Review., 36, 1–25.
Liu, B.-C. (1975). Quality of life: Concept, measure and results. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 34(1), 1–14.
Logan, T. D. (2006). Nutrition and well-being in the late nineteenth century. The Journal of Economic History, 66, 313–341.
Maddison, A. (2006). The world economy: Vol. 1 a millennial perspective. Vol 2: Historical statistics. Paris: Development Center of the OECD.
Margo, R. A. (1992). Wages and prices during the antebellum period: A survey and new evidence. In R. E. Gallman & J. J. Wallis (Eds.), American economic growth and standard of living before the civil war (pp. 173–216). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Martin, E. W. (1942). The standard of living in 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCloskey, D. N. (2011). Bourgeois dignity: Why economics can’t explain the modern world. London: University of Chicago Press.
Millward, R., & Baten, J. (2010). Population and living standards, 1914–1945. In S. Broadberry & K. H. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe: Volume 2, 1870 to the present (pp. 232–263). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mokyr, J. (1988). Is there still life in the pessimist case? Consumption during the industrial revolution, 1790–1850. The Journal of Economic History, 48(1), 69–92.
Mokyr, J. (2000). Why “more work for mother?” Knowledge and household behavior, 1870–1945. The Journal of Economic History, 60(1), 1–41.
Mokyr, J., & Stein, R. (1996). Science, health, and household technology: The effect of the pasteur revolution on consumer demand. In T. F. Bresnahan & R. J. Gordon (Eds.), The economics of new goods (pp. 143–206). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morris, D. M. (1979). Measuring the condition of the world’s poor: The physical quality of life index. Oxford: Pergamon.
Nafziger, S., & Lindert, P. H. (2012). Russian inequality on the eve of revolution (NBER Working Paper Series, 18383).
Nardinelli, C. (1990). Child labor and the industrial revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Nicholas, S., & Oxley, D. (1993). The living standards of women during the industrial revolution, 1795–1820. The Economic History Review, 46(4), 723–749.
Nicholas, S., & Steckel, R. H. (1991). Heights and living standards of English workers during the early years of industrialization, 1770–1815. The Journal of Economic History, 51(4), 937–957.
Noll, H.-H., & Zapf, W. (1994). Social indicators research: Societal monitoring and social reporting. In I. Borg & P. P. Mohler (Eds.), Trends and perspectives in empirical social research (pp. 168–206). New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Nordhaus, W. D. (1996). Do real-output and real-wage measures capture reality? the history of lighting suggests not. In T. F. Bresnahan & R. J. Gordon (Eds.), The economics of new goods (pp. 29–70). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nordhaus, W. D., & Tobin, J. (1973). Is growth obsolete? In M. Moss (Ed.), The measurement of economic and social performance (pp. 509–532). New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Nunn, N., & Qian, N. (2010). The Columbian exchange: A history of disease, food, and ideas. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(2), 163–188.
Offer, A. (2000). Economic welfare measurements and human well-being (Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, 34). University of Oxford.
Ostroot, N., & Snyder, W. (1996). The quality of life in historical perspective: France: 1695–1990. Social Indicators Research, 38(2), 109–128.
Oxley, D. (2003). ‘The seat of death and terror’: Urbanization, stunting, and smallpox. The Economic History Review, 56(4), 623–656.
Özmucur, S., & Pamuk, Ş. (2002). Real wages and standards of living in the Ottoman empire, 1489–1914. The Journal of Economic History, 62(2), 293–321.
Pamuk, Ş., & van Zanden, J. L. (2010). Standards of living. In S. Broadberry & K. H. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe: Volume 1, 1700–1870 (pp. 217–234). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Piketty, Th. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Pomeranz, K. (2000). The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy. Princeton脈and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Postel-Vinay, G., & Robin, J.-M. (1992). Eating, working, and saving in an unstable world: Consumers in nineteenth-century France. The Economic History Review, 45(3), 494–513.
Prados de la Escosura, L. (2013). World human development: 1870–2007 (CEPR Discussion Paper Series, 9292).
Rossi, N., Toniolo, G., & Vecchi, G. (2001). Is the Kuznets curve still alive? : Evidence from Italian household budgets, 1881–1961. The Journal of Economic History, 61(4), 904–925.
Sandberg, L. G., & Steckel, R. H. (1997). Was industrialization hazardous to your health? Not in Sweden! In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 127–160). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Scholliers, P. (1996). Real wages and the standard of living in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Some theoretical and methodological elucidations. Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial– und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 83(3), 307–333.
Scott, P., & Spadavecchia, A. (2011). Did the 48-hour week damage Britain’s industrial competitiveness? The Journal of Economic History, 64, 1266–1288.
Sen, A. K. (1985). Commodities and capabilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Soltow, L. (1992). Inequalities in the standard of living in the United States. In R. E. Gallman & J. J. Wallis (Eds.), American economic growth and standard of living before the civil war (pp. 265–308). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Steckel, R. H. (1995). Stature and the standard of living. Journal of Economic Literature, 33(4), 1903–1940.
Steckel, R. H., & Floud, R. (1997). Introduction. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 1–16). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2009). Report by the Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. Paris. http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf
Szreter, S. (1997). Economic growth, disruption, deprivation, disease and death: On the importance of the politics of public health for development. Population and Development Review, 23, 693–728.
Szreter, S., & Mooney, G. (1998). Urbanization, mortality and the standard of living debate: New estimates of the expectation of life at birth in nineteenth-century British cities. The Economic History Review, 51(1), 84–112.
Usher, D. (1980). The measurement of economic growth. Oxford: Blackwell.
van Zanden, J. L. (1999). Wages and the standard of living in Europe, 1500–1800. European Review of Economic History, 3(2), 175–198.
van Zanden, J. L., & van Leeuwen, B. (2012). Persistent but not consistent: The growth of national income in Holland 1347–1807. Explorations in Economic History, 49(2), 119–130.
van Zanden, J. L., Baten, J., Mira d'Ercole, M., Rijpma, A., Smith, C., & Timmer, M. (2014). How was life?: Global well-being since 1820. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Vecchi, G., & Coppola, M. (2006). Nutrition and growth in Italy, 1861–1911: What macroeconomic data hide. Explorations in Economic History, 43(3), 438–464.
Voth, H.-J. (1998). Time and work in eighteenth-century London. The Journal of Economic History, 58(1), 29–58.
Voth, H.-J. (2001). The longest years: New estimates of labor input in England, 1760–1830. The Journal of Economic History, 61(4), 1065–1082.
Walsh, L. (1992). Consumer behavior, diet, and the standard of living in late colonial and early antebellum America, 1770–1840. In R. E. Gallman & J. J. Wallis (Eds.), American economic growth and standard of living before the civil war (pp. 217–264). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weir, D. R. (1997). Economic welfare and physical well-being in France, 1750–1990. In R. H. Steckel & R. Floud (Eds.), Health and welfare during industrialization (pp. 161–200). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Williamson, J. G. (1982). Was the industrial revolution worth it? Disamenities and death in 19th century British towns. Explorations in Economic History, 19(4), 221–245.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
de Jong, H. (2015). Living Standards in a Modernizing World – A Long-Run Perspective on Material Wellbeing and Human Development. In: Glatzer, W., Camfield, L., Møller, V., Rojas, M. (eds) Global Handbook of Quality of Life. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9178-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9178-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9177-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9178-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)