Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:52:18.723Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Transformation of Hunger Revisited: Estimating Available Calories from the Budgets of Late Nineteenth-Century British Households

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2015

Ian Gazeley ,
Andrew Newell  and
Mintewab Bezabih
Ian Gazeley
Affiliation:
Professor of Economic History, Department of History, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN. E-mail: [email protected].
Andrew Newell
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SL. E-mail: [email protected].
Mintewab Bezabih
Affiliation:
Research Officer Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Tower 3, Clements Inn Passage, London WC2A 2AZ. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 512 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (Research Grant RES-062-23-2054). The authors wish to thank the editors and two anonymous referees for their many comments and suggestions. Errors remain our responsibilities.

References

REFERENCES

Almås, Ingvild. ”International Income Inequality: Measuring PPP Bias by Estimating Engel Curves for Food.” American Economic Review 102 no. 1 (2012): 1093–117.Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. General Report on Wages of Manual Labour Classes in United Kingdom with Tables of Average Rate of Wages and Hours of Labour of Persons Employed in Principal Trades, 1886 and 1891 1893-1894. (C.6889)Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. Report on Changes in Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour in United Kingdom; Standard Piece and Time Rates, 1893. (C.7567)Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. Return on Rates of Wages in principal Textile Trades of United Kingdom, with Reports, 1889. (C.5807)Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. Report on Standard Piece-Rates of Wages and Sliding Scales in United Kingdom, 1900. (Cd.144)Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, Dated 6th August, 1903:—for “Report on Wholesale and Retail Prices in the United Kingdom in 1902, with Comparative Statistical Tables for a Series of Years,” 1903. (HC.321)Google Scholar
British Parliamentary Papers. 18th Abstract of Labour Statistics, 1926.Google Scholar
Board of Trade. “Retail Prices and the Cost of Living.” Labour Gazette, August 1893.Google Scholar
Gazeley, Ian, and Horrell, Sara. “Nutrition in the English Agricultural Labourer's Household over the Course of the Long Nineteenth Century.” Economic History Review 66, no. 3 (2013): 757–84.Google Scholar
Gazeley, Ian, and Newell, Andrew. ”Urban Working Class Food Consumption and Nutrition in Britain in 1904.” IZA Discussion Paper No. 6988, November 2012.Google Scholar
Floud, Roderick, Fogel, Robert W., Harris, Bernard, et al. The Changing Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R. “Industrial Work and the Family Life Cycle.” Research in Economic History 4 (1979): 289–356.Google Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J., Boyer, George R., and Bailey, Roy E.. “The Union Wage Effect in Late Nineteenth Century Britain.” Economica 61, no. 4 (November 1994): 435–56.Google Scholar
Horrell, Sara, and Oxley, Deborah. “Crust or Crumb: Intra-household Resource Allocation and Male Breadwinning in Late Victorian Britain.” Economic History Review 52, no. 3 (1999): 494–522.Google Scholar
Lees, Lynn Hollen. “Getting and Spending: The Family Budgets of English Industrial Workers in 1890.” In Consciousness and Class Experiences in nineteenth century Europe, edited by Merriman, John M.. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1979.Google Scholar
Logan, Trevon D. “Nutrition and Well-Being in the Late Nineteenth Century.” The Journal of Economic History 66, no. 2 (2006): 313–41.Google Scholar
Logan, Trevon D.. “The Transformation of Hunger: The Demand for Calories Past and Present.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 388–408.Google Scholar
Maddison, Angus. The World Economy-Historical Statistics, Paris: OECD, 2003.Google Scholar
Nutribase. The Nutribase Complete Book for Food Counts. New York: Avery, 2001.Google Scholar
Paul, A.A., and Southgate, D.A.T. McCance and Widdowson's the Composition of Foods. London: HMSO, 1979.Google Scholar
Prest, A.R. Consumers’ Expenditure in the United Kingdom, 1900-1919. Cambridge, 1954.Google Scholar
Subramanian, Shankar, and Deaton, Angus. “The Demand for Food and Calories.” Journal of Political Economy 104, no. 1 (1996): 133–62.Google Scholar
U.S. Senate Committee on Finance “Retail Prices and Wages: A Report by Mr. Aldrich.” U.S. Senate Report No. 986. Washington, DC: GPO, 1892.Google Scholar
Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Consumer Behavior in the Nineteenth Century: Carroll D. Wright's Massachusetts Workers in 1875.” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 4, no. 2 (1967): 98–138.Google Scholar