Measuring misery: Body mass, ageing and gender inequality in Victorian London

Horrell, Sara; Meredith, David; Oxley, Deborah

doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2007.12.001

Cited by 82 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Humphries (2013) has argued, on the basis of present-day calculations by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, that the amount of calories in these baskets could not have been sufficient to feed a hard-working laborer. Previous research on heights and weights of nineteenth-century men and women had already confirmed this suspicion (Sara Horrell, David Meredith, and Deborah Oxley 2009). Moreover, Humphries has pointed out that nineteenth-century British working-class families on average contained seven to eight children (Robert Allen and Jacob Weisdorf 2011;Humphries 2013).…”

Section: Real Wagesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Marriages are Made in Kitchens: The European Marriage Pattern and Life-Cycle Servanthood in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Boter

2016

Feminist Economics

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Due to methodological difficulties of historical research on women's labor, little is known of women's contribution to household incomes in preindustrial economies. This article is the first to use domestic servants' wages, as documented in account books from the period 1752-1805, to estimate the capital that women could accumulate during their years of service before marriage. As such, it offers a new perspective on women's contribution to household resources. Results show that servants working for the most well-off households in eighteenth-century Amsterdam could save a marriage budget that was between one-third and half of the capital that an unskilled man could save in the same amount of time. Furthermore, servants' wages would in theory have been sufficient to support a family of four at the subsistence level, illustrating that women's wages and potential savings cannot be ignored.

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Section: Real Wagesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Marriages are Made in Kitchens: The European Marriage Pattern and Life-Cycle Servanthood in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Boter

2016

Feminist Economics

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“…For instance, Horrell and Oxley (2013), Horrell et al (2009) have highlighted the case of the ''impoverished unitary'' family, where economic constraints force preferential allocation of resources to breadwinners to maintain work capacity, thus reflecting the inequalities of outside labour market positions, but only out of necessity. Escaping poverty would result in more equitable allocation.…”

Section: A Unitary Schooling Investment Modelmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Bargaining models, rather than collective utility functions or the black box of culture, have become the tool of choice in empirical analysis (e.g. Horrell and Oxley 2013;Horrell et al 2009;Sen 1984, pp. 371-377).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Good for girls or bad for boys? Schooling, social inequality and intrahousehold allocation in early twentieth century Finland

Saaritsa

Kaihovaara

2014

Cliometrica

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Apart from the commonly emphasized historical or cultural explanations, was there an economics behind the early, extensive schooling of girls in Europe's Nordic periphery? This article analyses factors behind the emerging female majority in secondary schooling in early twentieth century Finland through resource allocation within households. We argue that a significant part of the female educational advantage can be explained with a classic unitary Beckerian schooling investment model. We apply an Engel specification widely used in development economics to a household budget dataset from the 1920s to estimate the effect of the age and gender of children on schooling investment across social groups. We find a pro-girl bias among households of low socio-economic status, explained primarily by the sizable penalty to boys caused by opportunity costs and expected returns. Worker boys could generate significant income from an early age, making their education initially expensive for cash-constrained families. Contrary to previous claims, the dropout rates of boys were also higher than those of girls. Together with a propensity to leave home earlier, this lowered the expected net returns to schooling. Meanwhile, the expansion of modern services created attractive job opportunities for secondary educated girls. We find no evidence of intrahousehold bargaining. The findings resemble certain cases in development economics and the economic history of advanced countries including the USA. Rather than matching with patterns of anti-girl discrimination in many developing countries, our results highlight the prehistory of the currently emerging pattern of female educational advantage-and male disadvantage-in OECD countries.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

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“…Analyses of height and weight data from the industrial period suggest that adverse health outcomes associated with industrialization and urbanization were disproportionately borne by marginalized groups, such as working-class women and children (Horrell, Humphries, & Voth, 1998;Horrell, Meredith, & Oxley, 2009;Horrell & Oxley, 2012, 2016Johnson & Nicholas, 1995;Meredith & Oxley, 2015;Nicholas & Oxley, 1993). Historians suggest that declines in the heights and weights of working-class women may be related to their declining economic importance within the household and the larger economy.…”

Section: Intersectionality and Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

The intersections of industrialization: Variation in skeletal indicators of frailty by age, sex, and socioeconomic status in 18th‐ and 19th‐century England

Yaussy

2019

American J Phys Anthropol

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Objectives: Intersectionality theory argues that various categories of identity and forms of systemic oppression interact and produce inequalities in resource access, economic opportunities, and health outcomes. However, there has been little explicit engagement with this theory by bioarchaeologists examining disparate health outcomes in the past. This study examines the associations among frailty, age at death, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES) in 18th-and 19th-century England. Materials and methods: The sample for this study comes from four industrial-era cemeteries from England, ca. 1711-1857. The associations among adult age (18+ years), SES, sex, and three skeletal indicators of stress (dental enamel hypoplasia [DEH, n = 293], cribra orbitalia [CO, n = 457], periosteal lesions [PNB, n = 436]) are examined using hierarchical log-linear analysis.Results: Significant interactions existed among the variables examined for two skeletal indicators: high SES females had lower frequencies of CO relative to other groups and males between ages 30-45 years exhibited higher frequencies of PNB compared to females or males of older or younger ages, regardless of SES. Additionally, sex and SES were consistently associated with age at death.Conclusions: These results suggest that patterns of stress indicators cannot be examined solely across unilateral axes of age, SES, or sex. Intersecting axes of privilege, marginalization, and structural oppression may have buffered high SES females from some negative health outcomes (CO) while predisposing them to others (risk of maternal mortality). Likewise, the hazardous working conditions relegated to adult males may have heightened the risk of injury, infection, and death for middle-aged men in industrial-era England. K E Y W O R D Sbioarchaeology, hierarchical log-linear analysis, intersectionality, mortality, paleopathology

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Measuring misery: Body mass, ageing and gender inequality in Victorian London

Cited by 82 publications

References 49 publications

Marriages are Made in Kitchens: The European Marriage Pattern and Life-Cycle Servanthood in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Marriages are Made in Kitchens: The European Marriage Pattern and Life-Cycle Servanthood in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Good for girls or bad for boys? Schooling, social inequality and intrahousehold allocation in early twentieth century Finland

The intersections of industrialization: Variation in skeletal indicators of frailty by age, sex, and socioeconomic status in 18th‐ and 19th‐century England

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