Is there anything real about real wages? A history of the official British cost of living index, 1914–62

Abstract

The problems with the official British cost of living index (COLI) are widely recognised, however analysis has largely focused on the degree to which it diverges from the alternative indexes constructed by Stone and Rowe, Seers and Gazeley. 2 The history of the index itself and the reasons why it was inaccurate have been largely overlooked. Stapleford's comprehensive account of the COLI in America has demonstrated the benefits to be derived from such a study. He highlights how 'controversy and power have walked hand in hand throughout the history of the CPI'. The potential of indexation to deliver a rational, objective and empirical form of governance, he argues, fuelled its growing importance within the economy. In practice, however, 'judgements with political valences extend all the way through the calculation process'. This tension meant that rather than being apolitical, the history of the index was fraught with political contestation. 3 There are strong affinities between the history of the COLI in America and Britain. On each side of the Atlantic, the elevation of the index reflected both the ascendency of experts within government and the development of a more interventionist state, fuelled by wars and depression. Nevertheless, the evolution of the indexes was shaped by the distinctive history of each nation. This article seeks to examine the particular chronology of the British index by embedding the narrative of The only substantial work on the history of the British index is an article by Wright. Whitehall,[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][114][115][116][117][118][119][120] See Trentmann, Free trade nation. Agar, The government machine, pp.97-8.

Constructing Cost of Living Indexes

“…This section provides an analysis of the context, ideas and uses of the Argentine, British, French, German, and U.S. COLIs during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly the interwar period, with the aim to shed light on the history of COLIs more broadly. 31 The comparison is based on existing research on the British (Searle 2015), French (Touchelay 2014;, German (Tooze 2001), and U.S. (Stapleford 2009) indexes. I argue that the contrast among these COLIs enhances the idea that for COLIs to hold as stable social and political artifacts (Desrosières 1993: 9) they have to have a role within the political economy and that, more importantly, in the first half of the twentieth century such role was closely related to their use as wage adjustment mechanisms.…”

Sense and Sensibility: a History of the Early Brazilian Cost-of-Living Indexes in Pursuit of a Minimum Wage, 1935–1939

“…The closest exceptions are Berlinck (1964) and Del Vecchio and Diéguez (2008), which scrutinize the exercises of Davis and Lowrie within narratives about the early years of the ELSP, and Wells (1983aWells ( , 1983b, which rely on Davis's and Lowrie's estimates to evaluate the living standards of São Paulo's industrial workers between 1930 and1975. Alternatively, this article focuses both on the contributions of Davis, Lowrie, and Rudolfer to the measurement of the cost of living in Brazil and on their connections with the search for a minimum wage in the country, paying heed to the broader historical context and to the theoretical influences in action. This effort fits into the growing body of literature in the history of economics aimed at understanding the use of index numbers to observe and measure the cost of living, both in developed countries (Tooze 2001;Stapleford 2009;Searle 2015;Touchelay 2015;Jany-Catrice 2018) and in Latin America (Sember 2013;Lanata Briones 2021;Pohl-Valero and Vargas Domínguez 2021;Vargas Domínguez 2023).…”

Reconstructing Official Statistics: A New Estimate of the Argentine Cost of Living Index, 1912-1943

“…By the 1920s, France (Touchelay 2015; Jany-Catrice 2018), Germany (Tooze 2001), the United Kingdom (Searle 2015; O'Neill, Ralph and Smith 2017) and the United States (Stapleford 2009), among other countries, had begun to publish COLIs. COLIs were also estimated in Argentina, Chile and Peru 2 .…”