Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the steps of the standard-of-living argument as it is now usually settled.
- Real wages begin rising clearly from around the 1820s
- Real wages remain roughly flat through the early decades
- Hours, working conditions and urban mortality worsen first
- Gains are judged real but late, and unevenly distributed
- Industrial employment expands rapidly from the 1780s
Hints
- The sequence separates when the costs arrived from when the benefits did.
- The wage improvement comes decades after the employment growth.
Show the answer
- Industrial employment expands rapidly from the 1780s
- Hours, working conditions and urban mortality worsen first
- Real wages remain roughly flat through the early decades
- Real wages begin rising clearly from around the 1820s
- Gains are judged real but late, and unevenly distributed
Why
The timing is the whole dispute. Optimists point at the wage series after 1820; pessimists point at mortality, hours and housing before it. Both are reading the same century, and the modern position accepts the lag, which means an entire generation bore the costs before any measurable gain arrived.
Practise Demographic and Economic Change
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