Seven Centuries of Wages and Prices: Some Earlier Estimates

Economica1961Vol. 28(109), pp. 30–30

Citations Over Time

Abstract

In two earlier papers2 we sketched an outline of the movements of builders' wage-rates, and the prices of some of the materials of consumption, in southern England since 1264. In this paper we compare our findings with those of some earlier investigators. It will be found that the most striking features of the record have long been known: what is surprising is that they have been so little discussed and assimilated. Our own mainstay, Thorold Rogers, does not seem to have compiled any index-numbers, but in his Six Centuries of Work and Wages (1884) he threw into his argument an occasional reckoning of the change in the general level of prices between one era and another. Thus in Chapter XIX, after citing wages in 1449-50 and 1877, he said now a multiple of twelve will fairly represent, except in houserent, the general difference in the cost of living then and now; our own index stands at 104 for 1449-50, and 1228 for 1875-84. In another place (Chapter XVII) he said that to meet its needs in 1770 as fully as in 1495, a family would need to spend 7j times as much: our index gives 101 for 1490-9, 784 for 1765-74. But when he compared that change in prices with the change in the aggregate pay of seven kinds of agricultural labour over the same span, his figures imply that the commodity equivalent of the pay had fallen to between a third and a quarter of what it had been, and here our own estimates for builders' wage-rates show a much smaller fall, to just over a half. A third incidental reckoning of the change in prices differs from ours greatly: in Chapter VI he gave another multiple of twelve, this time for the span from 1260 to 1760, but our corresponding multiple is 82 ; and as against this inference that the labourer in the time of Henry III was paid better than he was in the first year of George III , we should say that for the building craftsman there seems to have been little or no difference.

Citations Over Time

Abstract

Related Papers