Gender bias in nineteenth-century England: Evidence from factory children.

Gender bias against girls in nineteenth-century England has received much interest but establishing its existence has proved difficult. We utilise data on heights of 16,402 children working in northern textile factories in 1837 to examine whether gender bias was evident. Current interpretations argue against any difference. Here our comparisons with modern height standards reveal greater deprivation for girls than for boys. Discrimination is measured in girls' height-for-age score (HAZ) falling eight standard errors below boys' at ages 11, 11.5 and 12 years of age, capturing the very poor performance of factory girls. But this result cannot be taken at face value. We query whether modern standards require adjustment to account for the later timing of puberty in historical populations and develop an alternative. We also test the validity of the age data, considering whether parents were more prone to lie about the ages of their daughters, and question whether the supply of girls was fundamentally different from that of boys. We conclude that neither proposition is justified. Disadvantage to girls remains, although its absence amongst younger children precludes an indictment of culturally founded gender bias. The height data must remain mute on the source of this discrimination but we utilise additional information to examine some hypotheses: occupational sorting, differential susceptibility to disease, poorer nutrition for girls, disproportionate stunting from the effects of nutritional deprivation, and type and amount of work undertaken. Of these we suggest that girls had to do arduous physical labour in the home alongside their factory work. The only (unsubstantiated) alternative is that girls were more likely than boys to be put into factory work below the legal age limit. Both represent forms of gender bias.‘Author’ was supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. The Leverhulme Trust had no involvement in any aspect of the research design, implementation or analysis of this work.This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Elsevier

Life-cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260-1850

We provide a framework for considering the living standards among intact and disrupted working-class families of various sizes in historical England. We estimate family incomes without resort to the usual male day wages and ahistorical assumptions about men’s labour inputs, instead using approximations of their annual earnings. We incorporate women and children’s wages and labour inputs and use a family life-cycle approach which accommodates consumption smoothing through saving. The analysis extends to families with often overlooked but historically common structures: widows with their children, deserted wives, and families which include husbands/fathers but ones unable or unwilling to work. Our framework suggests living standards varied considerably over time and by family structure and dependency ratio. Small and intact families enjoyed high and rising living standards after 1700. Large, broken, and disrupted families depended on child labour and poor relief up until 1830

Beyond the male breadwinner: life-cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260-1850

This article provides a novel framework within which to evaluate real household incomes of predominantly rural working families of various sizes and structures in England in the years 1260–1850. We reject ahistorical assumptions about complete reliance on men's wages and male breadwinning, moving closer to reality by including women and children's contributions to family incomes. Our empirical strategy benefits from recent estimates of men's annual earnings, so avoiding the need to gross up day rates using problematic assumptions about days worked, and from new data on women and children's wages and labour inputs. A family life-cycle approach which accommodates consumption smoothing through saving adds further breadth and realism. Moreover, the analysis embraces two historically common but often overlooked family types alternative to the traditional male-breadwinner model: one where the husband is missing having died or deserted, and one where the husband is present but unwilling or unable to find work. Our framework suggests living standards varied widely by family structure and dependency ratio. Incorporating detailed demographic data available for 1560 onward suggests that small and intact families enjoyed high and rising living standards after 1700, while large or disrupted families depended on child labour and poor relief until c. 1830. A broader perspective on family structures informs understanding of the chronology and nature of poverty and coping strategies

From Duty to Right: The Role of Public Education in the Transition to Aging Societies

This paper argues that the introduction of compulsory schooling in early industrialization promoted the growth process that eventually led to a vicious cycle of population aging and negative pressure on education policy. In the early phases of industrialization, public education was undesirable for the young poor who relied on child labor. Compulsory schooling therefore discouraged childbirth, while the accompanying industrialization stimulated their demand for education. The subsequent rise in the share of the old population, however, limited government resources for education, placing heavier financial burdens on the young. This induced further fertility decline and population aging, and the resulting cycle may have delayed the growth of advanced economies in the last few decades

Ten millionaires and ten million beggars by MWANGI WA GITHINJI. (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, pp. xvii+197)

No abstract

Consumption, 1700-1870

Consumption has long been a key component of the historiography of Britain's industrial revolution. Early writers emphasised the importance of both home demand in creating a market for the mass-produced products of the new industries and of an export stimulus, particularly for cotton, in enabling the growth of manufacturing (Gilboy 1967; Davis 1979: 62–7). More recently the role of exports has been downgraded. Rather than instigating industrial growth, expansion of exports was the response required to Britain's increased demand for imports, particularly of tea, sugar and coffee, between 1745 and 1760 (Deane and Cole 1969: 40–98); even in the crucible of the industrial revolution, 1800–30, it was the preceding technological improvement that reduced the price of cotton and led to this product's domination of the export scene (Thomas and McCloskey 1981). However, consumption, through home demand, has taken on a life of its own. Consumer revolutions have been identified for numerous epochs in history (de Vries 2008: 37–9) but, for the pre-industrial and industrial revolution eras, the revolution in consumption was not just one of scale but also of structure. Consumers desired a new range of goods and this drove changes in production processes and in the relationship between households and markets. Economic historians accept that consumption played a role in industrialisation, but versions vary in both nature and chronology and the particular variant can be linked to the grand narratives of the industrial revolution on offer. In some accounts, a consumer revolution preceded and played a causal role in industrialisation (de Vries 1994, 2008); in others, a shift in demand coincided with industrialisation but is not necessarily given an autonomous role (McKendrick 1974, 1982); a third links the emulative desires generated by luxury consumption to imperialist expansion, overseas trade and innovative production (Berg 2002, 2004). Others are more sceptical about the widespread transformative role of cupidity and point to the very gradual percolation of the benefits of economic change to those in the bottom half of the income distribution (Feinstein 1998; Horrell and Humphries 1992)