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Keywords: child labour; consumption smoothing; costs-of-living; dependency ratio; life cycle; living standards; male breadwinner families; poor relief; prices wages Abstract 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. CAPTION(S): S1. Supplementary information as described in the text Byline: Sara Horrell, Jane Humphries, Jacob Weisdorf

Economists ignore caring labor since most is provided unpaid. Disregard is unjust, theoretically indefensible, and probably misleading. Valuation requires estimates of time spent and the replacement or opportunity costs of that time. I use the maintenance costs of British workers, costs which cover both the material inputs into upkeep and the domestic services needed to turn commodities into livings, to isolate the costs of paid domestic labor. I then impute the value of unpaid domestic labor from these market equivalents, and aggregate across households without domestic servants. Historically, unpaid domestic labor represented c. 20 percent of total income, a contribution that suggests the need to revise some standard narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claudia Goldin (ed.); CAREER AND FAMILY: WOMEN'S CENTURY-LONG JOURNEY TOWARD EQUITY; Princeton University Press ISBN 9780691201788 Hbk £22.00 ***** No abstract is available for this article. ***** Byline: Jane Humphries

Abstract In an earlier article we used archival and printed primary sources to construct the first long-run wage series for hand spinning in early modern Britain. This evidence challenged Robert Allen's claim that spinners were part of the 'high wage economy', which he sees as motivating invention, innovation, and mechanization in the spinning section of the textile industry. We respond to Allen's subsequent criticism of our argument, sources, and methods, and his presentation of alternative evidence. Allen contends that we have understated both the earnings and associated productivity of hand spinners by focusing on part-time and low-quality workers. His rejoinder rests on an ahistorical account of spinners' work and similarly weak evidence on wages as did his initial claims. Our augmented version of the spinners' wages dataset confirms our original findings. Spinners' wages were low even compared with other women workers, and neither wages nor the piece rates that determined unit labour costs followed a trajectory that could explain the invention and spread of the spinning jenny. Article Note: We are grateful to Peter Solar, Judy Stephenson, and John Styles for comments and suggestions, and we thank the Economic History Society and the Pasold Research Fund for supporting our data collection. We would also like to thank the three anonymous referees for their comments. CAPTION(S): S1. Regressions Byline: Jane Humphries, Benjamin Schneider

Victoria Bateman; THE SEX FACTOR: HOW WOMEN MADE THE WEST RICH; Wiley ISBN 9781509526765 Hbk. $69.95) ***** No abstract is available for this article. ***** Byline: Jane Humphries

Byline: Jane Humphries, Benjamin Schneider Abstract The prevailing explanation for why the industrial revolution occurred first in Britain during the last quarter of the eighteenth century is Allen's 'high wage economy' view, which claims that the high cost of labour relative to capital and fuel incentivized innovation and the adoption of new techniques. This article presents new empirical evidence on hand spinning before the industrial revolution and demonstrates that there was no such 'high wage economy' in spinning, which was a leading sector of industrialization. We quantify the working lives of frequently ignored female and child spinners who were crucial to the British textile industry with evidence of productivity and wages from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Spinning emerges as a widespread, low-productivity, low-wage employment, in which wages did not rise substantially in advance of the introduction of the jenny and water frame. The motivation for mechanization must be sought elsewhere. Article Note: The article has benefited from comments received when we presented work in progress at the McArthur Lectures at the University of Cambridge, the Form of Wages workshop at the Institute of Historical Research, the European Social Science History Conference, the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and the Economic History Association Annual Meeting. We would like to thank colleagues who have provided guidance, particularly John Styles, Peter Solar, and Judy Stephenson, and Susannah Ottaway, Joanna Innes, and Alice Dolan for sharing sources and data. We would also like to thank the four anonymous referees who provided extensive and helpful criticism and advice. The Economic History Society and Merton College, Oxford generously provided funds for data collection. CAPTION(S): S1. Average daily wage observations (nominal d.), welfare ratios, and comparisons S2. Daily wages by fibre (nominal d.) S3. Daily wages by region (nominal d.) S4. Additional sources