English Workers' Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A New Look.

This article focuses on the standard of living of English workers during the Industrial Revolution in England and Wales. This paper mines an expanding data base and emerges with a far clearer picture of workers' fortunes after 1750. While optimists and pessimists can both draw support from the enterprise, the pessimists' case emerges with the greater need for redirection and repair. This is a rich source for consistent time series on well-defined occupations. Annual earnings are reported there for large numbers of employees in each occupational category', spanning the whole earnings distribution over age, tenure, and skill within a given occupational group. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, farm and non-farm common labourers gained ground 021 higher-paid workers,, the labour aristocracy especially. From 1815 to the middle of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, the gap between higher- and lower-paid workers widened dramatically. Finally, the cost-of-living index should use commodity weights which reflect workers' budgets shares.