The strongStandard of Livingstrong Debate in International Perspective.pdfVIP

This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Health and Welfare during Industrialization Volume Author/Editor: Richard H. Steckel and Roderick Floud, Eds. Volume Publisher: University of Chicago Press Volume ISBN: 0-226-77156-3 Volume URL: /books/stec97-1 Publication Date: January 1997 Chapter Title: The Standard of Living Debate in International Perspective: Measures and Indicators Chapter Author: Stanley L. Engerman Chapter URL: /chapters/c7427 Chapter pages in book: (p. 17 - 46) 1 The StandardofLiving Debate inInternational Perspective: MeasuresandIndicators Stanley L. Engerman 1.1 Determining the StandardofLiving Probably the most famous debate on economic change has been that known as “the standard of living debate,” about the impact of the British industrial revolution.’Thisdebate began among individualsliving inthose times, contin- ues today, and will go on, no doubt, tomorrow. The debate’s vehemence has severaldistinct sources-the politics ofthe British class struggle, comparisons of British growthwith the pattern of communist economic growthin thetwen- tieth century, and more general questions of the attitudes toward society and culture that emerged in modern times. Given the broad and emotion-laden sweep of the issues in the British case, it is perhaps surprising that no such prolonged debate has arisen for most of the othernations that developed subsequently. It is not that such debates could not have been generated elsewhere, for periods in which dramatic structural changes in the economy took place, with the expansion of urbanization and industrialization. Surely one might anticipate such concerns for late- nineteenth-century Germany orJapan. Perhaps ithas been the earlier dating of the “First Industrial Revolution” in Britain, ormaybe it was the focus of Marx