Was there an ‘Industrious Revolution' before the Industrial Revolution? An Empirical Exercise for England, c. 1300-1830

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  • Robert C. Allen
  • Jacob Louis Weisdorf
It is conventionally assumed that the pre-modern working year was fixed and that consumption varied with changes in wages and prices. This is challenged by the twin theories of the ‘industrious' revolution and the consumer revolution, positing a longer working year as people earned surplus money to buy novel goods. In this study, we turn the conventional view on its head, fixing consumption rather than labour input. Specifically, we use a basket of basic consumption goods and compute the working year of rural and urban day labourers required to achieve that. By comparing with independent estimates of the actual working year, we find two ‘industrious' revolutions among rural workers; both, however, are attributable to economic hardship, and we detect no signs of a consumer revolution. For urban labourers, by contrast, a growing gap between their actual working year and the work  required to buy the basket provides great scope for a consumer revolution.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDepartment of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Number of pages18
Publication statusPublished - 2010

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Social Sciences - consumer Revolution, cost-of-living index, day wages, labor supply, labour supply, standard of living

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ID: 19571609