The end of destitution: Evidence from British working households 1904-1937

This paper estimates and investigates the reduction, almost to elimination, of absolute poverty among working households in Britain between 1904 and 1937. To do this, it exploits two newly-digitised data sets. The paper is a statistical generalisation, to working families in the whole of Britain, of the finding that absolute poverty declined dramatically over the early part of the twentieth century in the towns studied by, among others, Bowley and Rowntree. The paper offers a number of pieces of corroborative evidence that support the estimates. It simulates a decomposition of the poverty reduction into the effects of three proximate causes. The first two causes are the decline in family size and the rise of real wages and these were of roughly equal importance for poverty reduction. The third cause is a decline in wage inequality, but this is of relatively minor importance for poverty reduction among working households. It concludes with a discussion of deeper causes.poverty, living standards, Britain, demographic change, real wage growth

The meanings of happiness in Mass Observation's Bolton

In April 1938, the social investigative organization, Mass Observation conducted an inquiry into the happiness of Bolton people. In this article we analyse the letters and questionnaire responses generated through a competition that asked, ‘What is happiness?’ We examine the extent to which these competition entrants were representative of Bolton population and conclude that they were broadly representative in terms of occupation and sex, but less so in terms of social class. We describe the factors which according to competition entrants determined individual happiness. These were remarkably stable across age groups and gender. Economic security emerged as the dominant consideration, whilst personal pleasure was represented as playing little part in generating happiness. A detailed analysis of the happiness letters and questionnaires suggests that introspective and relational factors were also important determinants of well-being. We demonstrate that these introspective factors were framed by an individual’s personal moral framework and that relational factors were under-pinned by gendered conceptions of domestic happiness

The First WorldWar andWorking-Class Food Consumption in Britain

This paper reassesses the food consumption and dietary impact of the regimes of food and food price control and eventually, food rationing, that were introduced in Britain during the First World War. At the end of the War the Sumner Committee was convened to investigate the effects of these controls on the diets of working class families. With the help of some of the original returns of an earlier 1904 survey, we are able to reassess the Sumner Committee findings. We find that, although calories intakes did not fall for households headed by unskilled workers, there were substantial falls for skilled workers’ households. We also find that the price controls were particularly effective in changing the pattern of food spending. In particular, because the prices of many fruits and vegetables were allowed to rise much more than other foods, there were large falls in the intakes of nutrients most associated with these foods, to average levels well below today’s recommended intakes.First World War, Britain, food controls, food consumption, nutrition

No Room to Live: Urban Overcrowding in Edwardian Britain

We study the extent of overcrowding amongst British urban working families in the early 1900s and find major regional differences. In particular, a much greater proportion of households in urban Scotland were overcrowded than in the rest of Britain and Ireland. We investigate the causes of this spatial distribution of overcrowding and find that prices, especially rents and wages are the proximate causes of the phenomenon. In large cities, ports and cities specialising in old heavy industries high rent and overcrowding are more prevalent. Within cities, but not between cities, variations in infant mortality are clearly correlated with measures of overcrowding. All the findings are consistent with a core-periphery view of urban households choosing the location and size of housing to balance the health risks of overcrowding against the risks associated with lower and less regular incomes in places where rents are lower.poverty, rent, overcrowding, Scotland, 1904, infant mortality, Bowley

The End of Destitution

The paper presents a statistical generalisation, to working families in the whole of Britain, of Rowntree's finding that absolute poverty declined dramatically in York between 1899 and 1936. We use poverty lines devised by contemporary social investigators and two relatively newly-discovered data sets. We estimate an almost complete elimination of absolute poverty among working households for the whole of the Britain between 1904 and 1937. We offer a number of pieces of corroborative evidence that give support to our findings. We decompose the poverty reduction into the effects of two proximate causes, of roughly equal importance, the decline in family size and the rise of real wages. We conclude with some speculation about the deeper causes of the decline.poverty, living standards, Britain, demographic change, real wage growth

The transformation of hunger revisited: estimating available calories from the budgets of late nineteenth-century British households

Levels of nutrition among British worker's households in the late nineteenth century have been much debated. Trevon Logan (2006, 2009) estimated a very low average level of available calories. This paper re-examines the data and finds average levels of available calories much more in line with existing studies, more in line with what is known about energy requirements, and more in line with other aspects of the data. In sum, British households were likely to have been significantly better fed than Logan reports

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How hungry were the poor in late 1930s Britain?

This article re-examines energy and nutrition available to British working-class households in the late 1930s using individual household expenditure and consumption data. We use these data to address a number of questions. First, what was the extent of malnutrition in late 1930s Britain? Second, how did the incidence change over time? Third, what were the nutritional consequences of the school meals and school milk schemes? We conclude that, for working households, energy and nutritional availability improved significantly compared with current estimates of availability before the First World War. These improvements were not equally shared, however. In the late 1930s, homes with an unemployed head of household had diets that provided around 20 per cent less energy than their working counterparts and female-headed households had diets that provided around 10 per cent fewer kcal per capita than the average male-headed household. The availability of most macro- and micronutrients showed similar relative reductions. State interventions designed to improve diet and nutrition, such as school meals and school milk, made children's diets significantly healthier, even if they did not eliminate macro- and micronutrient deficiencies completely. Not surprisingly, they made the greatest difference to children in households where the head of household was unemployed

Conservation genetics of Roosevelt Elk in British Columbia

Species reintroductions have the potential to cause bottleneck events resulting in increased genetic drift, reduced genetic diversity and increased inbreeding, with potentially negative fitness consequences. Wildlife managers must consider how a species’ ecology may affect its genetic diversity. Roosevelt elk, once widespread along the West Coast, were extirpated from the mainland and experienced a substantial population bottleneck on Vancouver Island. The species was reintroduced to the BC mainland in the 1980s, and their descendants used for subsequent reintroductions within the region. To understand genetic diversity in extant and reintroduced populations of Roosevelt elk, we analyzed genetic variation in 355 elk from 13 populations. Molecular analyses showed reduced genetic diversity, genetic isolation of southern Vancouver Island, increased genetic drift resulting in significant differentiation between source and reintroduced herds, and very low effective population size in multiple populations indicating a potential for inbreeding and associated negative fitness consequences.University of Lethbridge, British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Developmen

Do phylogeny and habitat influence admixture among four North American chickadee (family: Paridae) species?

Accepted author manuscriptHybridization is an important aspect of speciation, yet questions remain about the ecological and environmental factors that influence hybridization among wild populations. We used microsatellite genotyping data and collected land cover and environmental data for four North American chickadee species: black-capped Poecile atricapillus, mountain P. gambeli, chestnut-backed P. rufescens and boreal P. hudsonicus chickadees. Combining these datasets, we sought to examine whether there is evidence of admixture between four widely distributed North American chickadee species; whether admixture takes place more often between more closely related species pairs or between species pairs with more similar ecological preferences; and whether certain habitat types have higher rates of admixture than others. We detected admixture for five of the six species pairs analyzed (chestnut-backed–mountain chickadee pair showed no evidence of admixture), and found rates of admixture varied geographically, and within taxa pairs. Admixture was higher among less closely related species than more closely related species, although habitat similarity was not a significant predictor. Finally, rates of admixture were higher in urban parkland habitats than deciduous, mixed or coniferous forest habitats. Our work indicates admixture occurs frequently among North American parids, and habitat and environmental variation may play an important role in the frequency and geographic distribution of hybridization.Ye