IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ereveh/v4y2000i01p27-57_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Work and prudence: Household responses to income variation in nineteenth-century Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Horrell, Sara
  • Oxley, Deborah

Abstract

A survey of industrial households conducted in 1889–90 is used to investigate participation in self-help organisations, such as sickness and death benefit clubs and friendly societies, and to examine whether payouts were important in seeing families through earnings crises. Formal self-help has been hypothesised to underpin the male breadwinner family form, reducing the risk incumbent in reliance on one source of earnings. The results here show that those households with multiple earners took out most insurance and also had recourse to informal strategies, such as eliciting greater labour force participation from other family members and economising on rent, when adversity carried male earnings down. Those reliant on a male breadwinner were left vulnerable. They insured less, benefits were insufficient to make up earnings shortfalls and they were unable to compensate for deficits through labour market strategies. Formal self-help was a complement to, not a substitute for, family employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Horrell, Sara & Oxley, Deborah, 2000. "Work and prudence: Household responses to income variation in nineteenth-century Britain," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 27-57, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ereveh:v:4:y:2000:i:01:p:27-57_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1361491600000137/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Horrell, Sara & Meredith, David & Oxley, Deborah, 2009. "Measuring misery: Body mass, ageing and gender inequality in Victorian London," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 93-119, January.
    2. Di Matteo, Livio & Herbert Emery, J. C., 2002. "Wealth and the demand for life insurance: evidence from Ontario, 1892," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 446-469, October.
    3. Emery, J.C. Herbert, 2010. ""Un-American" or unnecessary? America's rejection of compulsory government health insurance in the Progressive Era," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 68-81, January.
    4. Lars Fredrik Andersson & Liselotte Eriksson, 2016. "Voluntary or compulsory? Exploring dynamics of mutual cooperative formation in Swedish health insurance at the turn of the twentieth century," Working Papers 16007, Economic History Society.
    5. Jessica S. Bean, 2015. "‘To help keep the home going’: female labour supply in interwar London," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(2), pages 441-470, May.
    6. Nicolini, Esteban A., 2004. "Mortality, interest rates, investment, and agricultural production in 18th century England," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 130-155, April.
    7. Tatsuki Inoue, 2019. "The role of pawnshops in risk coping in early twentieth-century Japan," Papers 1905.04419, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2019.
    8. Tatsuki Inoue, 2023. "Health Impacts of Public Pawnshops in Industrializing Tokyo," Papers 2305.09352, arXiv.org.
    9. Andersson, Fredrik & Konrad, Kai A, 2003. "Globalization and Risky Human-Capital Investment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(3), pages 211-228, May.
    10. Kota Ogasawara, 2018. "Consumption smoothing in the working-class households of interwar Japan," Papers 1807.05737, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    11. Nicolini, Esteban, 2001. "Adult mortality and investment: a new explanation of the English agricultural productivity in the 18th century," IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History.WH wh016301, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto Figuerola.
    12. J.C. Herbert Emery, "undated". "America’s Rejection of Compulsory Government Health Insurance in the Progressive Era and its Legacy for National Insurance Today," Working Papers 2008-23, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 01 Apr 2008.
    13. Sakari Saaritsa, 2016. "“Data to Die For”? Finnish Historical Household Budgets," HHB Working Papers Series 3, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    14. Lars Fredrik Andersson & Liselotte Eriksson & Paul Nystedt, 2022. "Workplace accidents and workers’ solidarity: mutual health insurance in early twentieth‐century Sweden†," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(1), pages 203-234, February.
    15. Stanfors, Maria & Karlsson, Tobias & Andersson, Lars-Fredrik & Eriksson, Liselotte, 2022. "Membership in Mutual Health Insurance Societies: The Case of Swedish Manufacturing, circa 1900," Lund Papers in Economic History 238, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    16. Kota Ogasawara, 2023. "Consumption Smoothing in Metropolis: Evidence from the Working-class Households in Prewar Tokyo," Papers 2311.14320, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:ereveh:v:4:y:2000:i:01:p:27-57_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ere .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.