Is There Still Life in the Pessimist Case? Consumption during the Industrial Revolution, 1790—1850

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Abstract
Recent research on the standard-of-living controversy has argued that a marked improvement in the economic well-being of British workers began shortly after 1815 and continued unabated until 1850. I test that new optimism by generating a synthetic annual “standard-of-living variable” for the period 1790 to 1850. The variable is based on estimating a relation between living standards and the consumption of some key commodities for 1855 to 1900 and then using that relation to “retrocast” living standards for 1790 to 1850. The results strongly suggest that the hypothesis of no or little improvement cannot be rejected.