IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbu/wpaper/5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Scared to be poor: Vulnerability and poverty in Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century

Author

Listed:
  • Federica Di Battista

Abstract

This work explores the determinants of poverty in Edwardian Britain. We use a new household budget sample collected between 1900 and 1914 to understand what role vulnerability played in determining poverty and undernutrition. First, using a probit model we find that due to perceived risk on one hand, and to social norms on the other, families purchased insurance schemes as a strategy to cope with uncertainty. Second, using recursive mixed process estimation, we find that the decision to insure caused a reallocation from food to precautionary expenditures, which led to a significant reduction in calorie availability.

Suggested Citation

  • Federica Di Battista, 2016. "Scared to be poor: Vulnerability and poverty in Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century," HHB Working Papers Series 5, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbu:wpaper:5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://papers.hhbproject.com/media/workingpapers/5_dibattista.pdf
    File Function: 5_dibattista.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harold Alderman & Christina H. Paxson, 1994. "Do the Poor Insure? A Synthesis of the Literature on Risk and Consumption in Developing Countries," International Economic Association Series, in: Edmar L. Bacha (ed.), Economics in a Changing World, chapter 3, pages 48-78, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Vecchi, Giovanni & Coppola, Michela, 2006. "Nutrition and growth in Italy, 1861-1911: What macroeconomic data hide," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 438-464, July.
    3. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane, 1992. "Old Questions, New Data, and Alternative Perspectives: Families' Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 849-880, December.
    4. Günther, Isabel & Harttgen, Kenneth, 2009. "Estimating Households Vulnerability to Idiosyncratic and Covariate Shocks: A Novel Method Applied in Madagascar," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 1222-1234, July.
    5. D. J. Oddy, 1970. "Working-Class Diets in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 23(2), pages 314-322, August.
    6. Peter Scott & James Trevor Walker, 2015. "Demonstrating distinction at 'the lowest edge of the black-coated class': The family expenditures of Edwardian railway clerks," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(4), pages 564-588, June.
    7. Luc J. Christiaensen & Kalanidhi Subbarao, 2005. "Towards an Understanding of Household Vulnerability in Rural Kenya," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 14(4), pages 520-558, December.
    8. Feinstein, Charles, 1988. "The Rise and Fall of the Williamson Curve," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 699-729, September.
    9. Hunt, E. H., 1986. "Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760–1914," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(4), pages 935-966, December.
    10. David Roodman, 2011. "Fitting fully observed recursive mixed-process models with cmp," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 11(2), pages 159-206, June.
    11. Rossi, Nicola & Toniolo, Gianni & Vecchi, Giovanni, 2001. "Is The Kuznets Curve Still Alive? Evidence From Italian Household Budgets, 1881–1961," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(4), pages 904-925, December.
    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. Emiliano Magrini & Pierluigi Montalbano, 2012. "Trade openness and vulnerability to poverty: Vietnam in the long-run (1992-2008)," Working Paper Series 3512, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Lindert, Peter H., 2000. "Three centuries of inequality in Britain and America," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 167-216, Elsevier.
    3. Echevin, Damien, 2011. "Characterizing poverty and vulnerability in rural Haiti: a multilevel decomposition approach," MPRA Paper 35659, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Nguyen, Thanh-Tung & Nguyen, Trung Thanh & Grote, Ulrike, 2020. "Multiple shocks and households' choice of coping strategies in rural Cambodia," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    5. Chiwaula, Levison & Waibel, Hermann, 2011. "Does seasonal vulnerability to poverty matter? A case study from the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands in Nigeria," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2011 19, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    6. Robert C. Allen, 2005. "Capital Accumulation, Technological Change, and the Distribution of Income during the British Industrial Revolution," Economics Series Working Papers 239, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Satya R. Chakravarty & Nachiketa Chattopadhyay & Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan, 2016. "Measuring the impact of vulnerability on the number of poor: a new methodology with empirical illustrations," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber & Guanghua Wan (ed.), The Asian ‘Poverty Miracle’, chapter 4, pages 84-117, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Katja Landau & Stephan Klasen & Walter Zucchini, 2012. "Measuring Vulnerability to Poverty Using Long-Term Panel Data," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 118, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    9. Jhon Edwar Hernández & Blanca Zuluaga, 2022. "Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty: An Application to Colombian Households," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 345-371, November.
    10. Prieto Suarez, Joaquin, 2023. "Degrees of vulnerability to poverty: a low-income dynamics approach for Chile," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121993, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. N. F. R. Crafts, 1997. "Some Dimensions of the ‘Quality of Life’ During the British Industrial Revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 50(4), pages 617-639, November.
    12. Yating Peng & Bo Liu & Mengliang Zhou, 2022. "Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural Areas under the Shock of Climate Change: Evidence from China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-21, June.
    13. Robert William Fogel, 1990. "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms," NBER Historical Working Papers 0016, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Anh Thu Quang Pham & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya & Ha Vu, 2021. "Estimating poverty and vulnerability to monetary and non-monetary poverty: the case of Vietnam," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(6), pages 3125-3177, December.
    15. Gazeley, Ian & Holmes, Rose & Newell, Andrew T. & Reynolds, Kevin & Gutierrez Rufrancos, Hector, 2018. "Inequality among European Working Households, 1890-1960," IZA Discussion Papers 11355, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Gaurav, Sarthak, 2015. "Are Rainfed Agricultural Households Insured? Evidence from Five Villages in Vidarbha, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 719-736.
    17. repec:ehl:lserod:121085 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Vo, Thang T., 2018. "Household vulnerability as expected poverty in Vietnam," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 10, pages 1-14.
    19. Oconnor, Christopher, 2023. "Robust estimates of vulnerability to poverty using quantile models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    20. Christian D. Mina & Katsushi S. Imai, 2017. "Estimation of Vulnerability to Poverty Using a Multilevel Longitudinal Model: Evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(12), pages 2118-2144, December.
    21. Alfani, Federica & Dabalen, Andrew & Fisker, Peter & Molini, Vasco, 2015. "Can we measure resilience ? a proposed method and evidence from countries in the Sahel," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7170, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    1900-1914; Great Britain; insurance; poverty; vulnerability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • 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:hbu:wpaper:5. 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: Giuliana Freschi (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://papers.hhbproject.com/ .

    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.