IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cmh/wpaper/29.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

By-Employments In Early Modern England And Their Significance For Estimating Historical Male Occupational Structures

Author

Abstract

Based on the evidence from probate inventories, by-employments have generally been presumed ubiquitous amongst early modern Englishmen. This would appear to present a significant problem for estimates of the contemporary male occupational structure, since the sources on which these estimates are based describe men almost always by their principal employment only. This paper argues that this problem is vanishingly small, for three reasons. Firstly, the probate inventory evidence is shown to exaggerate the incidence of by-employments by a factor of two, as a consequence of its inherent wealth bias. Secondly, it is demonstrated that even after wealth-bias correction, the probate record greatly overstates by-employment incidence as most of the traces of subsidiary activities in the inventories actually point to the employments of other members of the household, not to by-employments of the inventoried male household head. Thirdly, even if one ignored this and assumed that they did, in fact, point to his by-employments, they are shown to have been relatively small in economic importance compared to the principal employment, and to necessitate only a very minor adjustment of the principal-employment-only male occupational structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastian A.J. Keibek, 2016. "By-Employments In Early Modern England And Their Significance For Estimating Historical Male Occupational Structures," Working Papers 29, Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge, revised 21 Mar 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk/docs/CWPESH_number_29_March_2017.pdf
    File Function: None.
    Download Restriction: None.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Main, Gloria L. & Main, Jackson T., 1988. "Economic Growth and the Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640–1774," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(1), pages 27-46, March.
    2. Humphries, Jane, 1990. "Enclosures, Common Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(1), pages 17-42, March.
    3. Jones, Alice Hanson, 1972. "Wealth Estimates for the New England Colonies about 1770," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 98-127, March.
    4. Levine, David & Wrightson, Keith, 1991. "The Making of an Industrial Society: Whickham 1560-1765," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198200666, Decembrie.
    5. Muldrew,Craig, 2011. "Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521881852, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries & Jacob Weisdorf, 2019. "Working for a Living? Women and Children’s Labour Inputs in England, 1260-1850," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _172, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Lorena Walsh, 1992. "Consumer Behavior, Diet, and the Standard of Living in Late Colonial and Early Antebellum America, 1770-1840," NBER Chapters, in: American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War, pages 217-264, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Thijs Lambrecht, 2013. "The welfare paradox: poor relief and economic development in England in a European perspective, c.1600-c.1800," Working Papers 13001, Economic History Society.
    4. Penelope Francks, 2022. "Industriousness and divergence: Living standards, housework and the Japanese diet in comparative historical perspective," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(1), pages 26-46, March.
    5. Gazeley, Ian & Verdon, Nicola, 2014. "The first poverty line? Davies' and Eden's investigation of rural poverty in the late 18th-century England," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 94-108.
    6. Sebastian A.J. Keibek, 2016. "Correcting the probate inventory record for wealth bias," Working Papers 28, Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge, revised 21 Mar 2017.
    7. Daniel Barbezat, 2011. "The Economic History of European Growth," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 51, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Jane Humphries, 2006. "`Because they are too menny...` children, mothers, and fertility decline: The evidence from working-class autobiographies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _064, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. Horrell, Sara & Oxley, Deborah, 2016. "Gender bias in nineteenth-century England: Evidence from factory children," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 47-64.
    10. Gregory Clark, 2018. "Growth or stagnation? Farming in England, 1200–1800," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(1), pages 55-81, February.
    11. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2019. "Family standards of living over the long run, England 1280-1850," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 419, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    12. Bas Bavel & Auke Rijpma, 2016. "How important were formalized charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state? A long-run analysis of selected western European cases, 1400–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(1), pages 159-187, February.
    13. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2020. "Life-cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260-1850," Economic History Working Papers 106986, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    14. Vicente Pinilla, 2024. "Agricliometrics and Agricultural Change in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," Springer Books, in: Claude Diebolt & Michael Haupert (ed.), Handbook of Cliometrics, edition 3, pages 1837-1869, Springer.
    15. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries & Jacob Weisdorf, 2022. "Beyond the male breadwinner: Life‐cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(2), pages 530-560, May.
    16. Jules Pretty, 1991. "Farmers' extension practice and technology adaptation: Agricultural revolution in 17–19th century Britain," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 8(1), pages 132-148, December.
    17. Jane Humphries, 2013. "The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective: a critique of the high wage economy interpretation of the British industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(3), pages 693-714, August.
    18. Phil Withington, 2020. "Intoxicants and the invention of ‘consumption’," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(2), pages 384-408, May.
    19. Jakob Molinder & Christopher Pihl, 2023. "Women's work and wages in the sixteenth century and Sweden's position in the ‘little divergence’," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(1), pages 145-168, February.
    20. Agarwal, Bina, 2001. "Participatory Exclusions, Community Forestry, and Gender: An Analysis for South Asia and a Conceptual Framework," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(10), pages 1623-1648, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    by-employments; probate inventories; wealth bias; occupational structure; parish registers; women’s work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cmh:wpaper:29. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Guillaume Proffit or Alexis Litvine (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dhcamuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.