IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/25467.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Consumer Revolution: Turning Point in Human History, or Statistical Artifact?

Author

Listed:
  • Clark, Gregory

Abstract

A Farewell to Alms argued based on wages, rents and returns on capital that the English by 1800 were no wealthier than in 1400. An argument against this has been the supposed consumer revolution of 1600-1750. Since ordinary families by 1750 begin routinely consuming former luxury goods, income must have risen much faster than wages through a concomitant industrious revolution. This paper argues that the consumer and industrious revolutions of 1600-1750 are artifacts created by misinterpreting the major source on consumption in these years, probate inventories. Properly interpreted there is no conflict between wages, income and consumption in England 1600-1750.

Suggested Citation

  • Clark, Gregory, 2010. "The Consumer Revolution: Turning Point in Human History, or Statistical Artifact?," MPRA Paper 25467, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:25467
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/25467/1/MPRA_paper_25467.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Allen, 2008. "A Review of Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 946-973, December.
    2. E. A. Wrigley, 2007. "English county populations in the later eighteenth century1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 60(1), pages 35-69, February.
    3. Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2001. "The Longest Years: New Estimates Of Labor Input In England, 1760–1830," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(4), pages 1065-1082, December.
    4. Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Neil, 2010. "Malthus to Modernity: England’s First Fertility Transition, 1760-1800," MPRA Paper 25465, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Gregory Clark, 2009. "The Macroeconomic Aggregates for England, 1209-2008," Working Papers 919, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    6. Clark, Gregory & Werf, Ysbrand Van Der, 1998. "Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(03), pages 830-843, September.
    7. Gregory Clark & Michael Huberman & Peter H. Lindert, 1995. "A British food puzzle, 1770–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 48(2), pages 215-237, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. María Inés Moraes & Rebeca Riella & Carolina Vicario & Pablo Marmisolle, 2021. "Wealth inequality in colonial Hispanic-America: Montevideo in the late 18th century," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 21-18, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    2. Clark, Gregory, 2013. "1381 and the Malthus delusion," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 4-15.
    3. Dobado-González, Rafael, 2013. "La globalización hispana del comercio y el arte en la Edad Moderna [The hispanic globalization of commerce and art in the early modern era]," MPRA Paper 51112, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Pınar Ceylan, 2024. "Was there a ‘consumer revolution’ in the Ottoman Empire?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 77(3), pages 823-848, August.
    5. Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Joe & Smith, Brock, 2010. "The Surprising Wealth of Pre-industrial England," MPRA Paper 25468, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. Clark, Gregory & Cummins, Joe & Smith, Brock, 2010. "The Surprising Wealth of Pre-industrial England," MPRA Paper 25468, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Brock Smith & Gregory Clark & Joe Cummins, 2010. "The Surprising Wealth of Pre-industrial England," Working Papers 139, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    2. Clark, Gregory, 2013. "1381 and the Malthus delusion," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 4-15.
    3. Gregory Clark, 2010. "The macroeconomic aggregates for England, 1209–2008," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 51-140, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    4. Peter Sandholt Jensen & Cristina Victoria Radu & Paul Sharp, 2019. "Days Worked and Seasonality Patterns of Work in Eighteenth Century Denmark," Working Papers 0162, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    5. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Jeanet Bentzen & Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Paul Sharp, 2010. "Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England," DEGIT Conference Papers c015_036, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    6. Morgan Kelly & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2012. "Agricultural output, calories and living standards in England before and during the Industrial Revolution," Working Papers 201212, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    7. Weisdorf, Jacob & Rota, Mauro, 2020. "Italy and the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from Stable Employment in Rural Areas," CEPR Discussion Papers 14652, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Bas van Leeuwen & Jieli van Leeuwen-Li & Reinhard Pirngruber, 2013. "The standard of living in ancient societies: a comparison between the Han Empire, the Roman Empire, and Babylonia," Working Papers 0045, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    9. Rota, Mauro & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2019. "Expensive Labour and the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from Stable Employment in Rural Areas," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 442, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    10. Stephen Broadberry & Bruce Campbell & Alexander Klein & Mark Overton & Bas van Leeuwen, 2012. "British Economic Growth, 1270-1870: an output-based approach," Studies in Economics 1203, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    11. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Jeanet Bentzen & Carl‐Johan Dalgaard & Paul Sharp, 2017. "Pre‐reformation Roots of the Protestant Ethic," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 1756-1793, September.
    12. Collins, Jason & Baer, Boris & Weber, Ernst Juerg, 2014. "Economic Growth And Evolution: Parental Preference For Quality And Quantity Of Offspring," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(8), pages 1773-1796, December.
    13. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane, 2019. "Children’s work and wages in Britain, 1280–1860," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 1-1.
    14. Angeles, Luis, 2008. "GDP per capita or real wages? Making sense of conflicting views on pre-industrial Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 147-163, April.
    15. Koyama, Mark, 2012. "The transformation of labor supply in the pre-industrial world," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 505-523.
    16. Nicholas Crafts, 2021. "Understanding productivity growth in the industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 309-338, May.
    17. Henning Bovenkerk & Christine Fertig, 2023. "Consumer revolution in north‐western Germany: Material culture, global goods, and proto‐industry in rural households in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(2), pages 551-574, May.
    18. Stephen Broadberry & Bruce M. S. Campbell & Alexander Klein & Mark Overton & Bas van Leeuwen, 2018. "Clark's Malthus delusion: response to ‘Farming in England 1200–1800’," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(2), pages 639-664, May.
    19. Broadberry, Stephen, 2013. "Accounting for the great divergence," Economic History Working Papers 54573, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    20. Ho, Chi Pui, 2016. "Industrious Selection: Explaining Five Revolutions and Two Divergences in Eurasian Economic History within a Unified Growth Framework," MPRA Paper 73862, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer Revolution Pre-Modern;

    JEL classification:

    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    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:pra:mprapa:25467. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.