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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Poor Relief, Informal Assistance, And Short Time During The Lancashire Cotton Famine, George R. Boyer
Poor Relief, Informal Assistance, And Short Time During The Lancashire Cotton Famine, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] This paper presents new evidence concerning the importance of poor relief as a source of income assistance for unemployed operatives during the Lancashire cotton famine. My comparison of weekly data on the number of relief recipients in 23 distressed poor law unions with estimates of weekly cotton consumption for the period November 1861 to December 1862 suggests that the average length of time between becoming unemployed and receiving poor relief was less than 2 months. This result is shown to be consistent with available evidence on working class saving. Given the meager amount of informal assistance available to them, …
[Review Of The Book Interwar Unemployment In International Perspective], George R. Boyer
[Review Of The Book Interwar Unemployment In International Perspective], George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] The book redresses two imbalances in the recent literature on interwar unemployment: its almost exclusive focus on the United States and Britain, and its predominantly macroeconomic nature. To achieve these goals, the editors encouraged the authors of the country studies to address a set of microeconomic issues, including the extent to which the incidence and duration of unemployment varied across economic and demographic groups, and the effect of unemployment on labor force participation and poverty. Two macroeconomic issues also are addressed in several of the papers: the effects of real wages and of unemployment insurance on unemployment. These two …
The Economic Role Of The English Poor Law, 1780-1834, George R. Boyer
The Economic Role Of The English Poor Law, 1780-1834, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] Over the 85-year period from 1748/50 to 1832/34, real per capita expenditures on poor relief increased at an average rate of approximately 1 percent per year. There were also important changes in the administration of relief with respect to able-bodied laborers during the period. Policies providing relief outside of workhouses to unemployed and under-employed able-bodied laborers became widespread during the 1770s and 1780s in the grain-producing South and East of England. The so-called Speenhamland system of outdoor relief flourished until 1834, when it was abolished by the Poor Law Amendment Act. The aim of the thesis is to provide …
The Evolution Of Unemployment Relief In Great Britain, George R. Boyer
The Evolution Of Unemployment Relief In Great Britain, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] Relatively little has been written about unemployment relief during the period between the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and the adoption of national unemployment insurance in 1911. This study is an attempt to help fill the gap in the literature. It examines the changing roles played by poor relief, private charity, trade unions, and public employment in the lives of the urban unemployed during cyclical downturns from 1834 to 1911. The story that emerges offers no support for a "Whig theory of welfare." Public assistance for the unemployed was more generous, and more certain, from …
The Poor Law, Migration, And Economic Growth, George R. Boyer
The Poor Law, Migration, And Economic Growth, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
The loss to the English economy caused by decreased migration resulting from relief payments to agricultural laborers is estimated. I conclude that, at worst, the Poor Law had a small negative impact on national product. If poor relief and wages were substitutes, the Poor Law may have had a positive impact on capital formation and economic growth.
Unemployment And The Uk Labour Market Before, During And After The Golden Age, Timothy J. Hatton, George R. Boyer
Unemployment And The Uk Labour Market Before, During And After The Golden Age, Timothy J. Hatton, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
During the ‘golden age’ of the 1950s and 1960s unemployment in Britain averaged 2 per cent. This was far lower than ever before or since and a number of hypotheses have been put forward to account for this unique period in labour market history. But there has been little attempt to isolate precisely how the determinants of wage setting and unemployment differed before, during and after the golden age. We estimate a two-equation model over the whole period from 1872 to 1999 using a newly constructed set of long-run labour market data. We find that the structure of real wage …
New Estimates Of British Unemployment, 1870-1913, George R. Boyer, Timothy J. Hatton
New Estimates Of British Unemployment, 1870-1913, George R. Boyer, Timothy J. Hatton
George R. Boyer
We present new estimates of the British industrial unemployment rate for 1870- 1913, which improve on the Board of Trade's prior estimates. We use similar sources, but our series includes additional industrial sectors, allows for short-time working, and aggregates the various sectors using appropriate labor-force weights from the census. The resulting index suggests a rate of industrial unemployment that was generally higher, but less volatile, than the board's index. We then adjust our series to an economywide basis, and construct a consistent time series of overall unemployment for 1870-1999.