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SUMMARY:A Respectable Living and Women’s Work\, England\, 1270-1860 - Ja
 ne Humphries (London School of Economics)
DTSTART:20221027T161500Z
DTEND:20221027T173000Z
UID:TALK178889@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Martin Andersson
DESCRIPTION:This paper argues that the cost of living respectably can be m
 easured by what it cost to board and lodge the reputable.  The methodology
  allows for changes in the composition of consumption\, the introduction o
 f new goods\, and the inclusion of the costs of the household services nee
 ded to turn commodities into livings.   Over 4200 observations\, drawn mai
 nly from primary sources\, trace levels and trends in board and lodging co
 sts for Britain\, 1270-1860.  Used to deflate wage series\, the board and 
 lodging costs provide an alternative account of long-run trends in living 
 standards which can be compared with conventional welfare ratios.  \n\nOve
 r 4200 observations\, drawn mainly from primary sources\, trace levels and
  trends in board and lodging costs\, taken as indicating trends in the cos
 ts of a socially and culturally defined standard of respectable living.  E
 ssentially\, the paper endogenizes the materiality of respectability and r
 eads its value from the market signals of the past. In this way the paper 
 provides an alternative approach to the cost of living\, which\, while not
  replacing conventional indeces\, accommodates changes both in the composi
 tion and kind of goods and services considered essential for decency and i
 n the cost of the domestic labour needed to transform this changing collec
 tion of material inputs into a decorous lifestyle.  In this way it circumv
 ents the problems with Laspeyres cost of living indices relating to new go
 ods and to shifting expectations\, and simultaneously uncovers the importa
 nce of household services in living costs.   Respectable living\, as it ev
 olved in terms of both the categories of goods and services included and t
 he particular components of those categories\, required more and more expe
 nsive domestic labour.  While the commercialized sector of this labour has
  been barely recognized\, the unpaid sector has been totally ignored. To t
 he extent that domestic labour was provided unpaid by a household member i
 t would drop out of the cost of living as conventionally measured but the 
 board and lodging approach reveals its necessity for a respectable living.
   The support wage-earners afforded domestically-occupied family members w
 as recompense for productive activity\, and a legitimate charge on family 
 earnings not a gratuitous hand-out for a non-worker.  Comparisons between 
 board and lodging costs and the costs of the respectability basket both in
  relation to men’s wages provide a fresh perspective on living standards
 .  They suggest that rising expectations muted the gains implied by standa
 rd welfare ratios.  Periods of convergence and divergence identify eras wh
 en new goods and services\, permanently excluded from the basket\, edged i
 nto respectable living as understood by aspirant forebears and became refl
 ected in costs.  This alternative history of living standards suggests tha
 t the quest for respectability through its pressure on wages contributed t
 o the industriousness of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuri
 es\, and provided more work for those specialized in ‘housewifery’ whe
 ther waged or unwaged.  And this raises a final more speculative point.  A
  hedonic regression identifies the cost of the domestic labour needed to p
 rovide board and lodging of different types in different times and places\
 , and so provides a market equivalent for the value of unpaid domestic ser
 vice.  Relaying these market equivalents into a full-scale computation of 
 the historical values of unpaid domestic service would provide wholly new 
 insight into understanding women’s contribution to economic growth and w
 ellbeing\, a vital task for the future. \n
LOCATION:History Faculty\, Room 6
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