Preliminary Programme

The historic production of family budgets was sparse in the history of Spain. Statistics do not offer systematically family budget data about it up to 1958 (first Family Budget Survey). The majority of available family budgets were published by the Institute of Social Reforms (1904-1924), the Labor Inspection (1907-1923), the Ministry of Labor (1914-1930), the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce (1848-1930), the Municipal Statistical Administrations (1904-1930) and Worker’s organizations (1880-1936). Spanish historiography has used some of them on a local (Borderías, López Guallar 2001, 2003) or regional basis (Borderías&Muñoz-Abeledo 2018; as well as for some specific rural or industrial working-class groups (Deu, 1987; Ballesteros, 1997a y 1997b; Lana Berasain, 2002 y 2007; Colome, Saguer, Vicedo 2002; Garrabou, Ramon-Muñoz, Tello, 2015; Pérez- Castroviejo, 1992, 2006; Escudero y Pérez Castroviejo, 2010). In this paper, we will present new evidences on men and women daily wages and estimation of the annual income of different occupational groups of the working-class in all Spanish provincial capitals (1900-1930). We also will calculate the minimum cost of the working class family basket (food, cloth, housing and other expenses). Analysis of food consumption has taking into account nutritional requirements to meet basic human needs and to sustain an adult active men, women and children. We aim to estimate the capacity of men wages to sustain the family and the contribution of women to the family economy. (Show less)

In the past decade, Robert Allen’s method of calculating ‘welfare ratios’ – that show whether one man’s wage could purchase sufficient consumption baskets for himself, his wife, and two children – has been adopted by scholars researching historical living standards in various parts of the world. This method is worthwhile because it enables them to “maintain the international comparability and temporal consistency of [...] real wage series.” Indeed, thanks to this method, we now better understand the world-wide development of living standards and inequality during the past four centuries. This method has nevertheless been criticized because, among other problems, it is built on unrealistic assumptions about family size. For instance, nineteenth-century English families were usually much larger than Allen assumes. Therefore, additional research on the relationship between family size and real wages is necessary to better understand historical household living standards.
This paper calculates the welfare ratio’s of Dutch rural and urban households during the nineteenth century, accounting for changes in household size and consumption during the life-cycle. It shows that welfare ratio’s – based on one man’s wage as the sole source of income – of most households dropped below the subsistence level when there were multiple children present. This was especially true in rural regions where wages were relatively low. Therefore, during the major part of their life-cycle, households were likely to generate other types of income next to the husband’s wage such as women’s and children’s wage labour or subsistence agriculture. This paper further calculates alternative welfare ratio’s by calculating the absolute and relative values of these additional incomes.

References
Allen, R. C., Bassino, J.-P., Ma, D., Moll-Murata, C. and van Zanden, J. L., 'Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China, 1738-1925: in Comparison with Europe, Japan, and India', Economic History Review 64, no. 1 (2011), pp. 8-38.
Frankema, E. and van Waijenburg, M., 'Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880-1965', Journal of Economic History 72, no. 4 (2012), pp. 895-926.
Humphries, J., 'The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution', Economic History Review 66, no. 3 (2013), pp. 693-714.
Schneider, E. B., 'Real Wages and the Family: Adjusting Real Wages to Changing Demography in Pre-Modern England', Explorations in Economic History 50, no. 1 (2013), pp. 99-115. (Show less)

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct family budgets in the Spanish fishing port of Gijón in 1924. We want, first, to obtain nominal wage in this decade aamong different sectors for this city-port; second, to analyse the wage gender gap and to know the women and children contribution to the family economies; third, once we know the family income, we want to reconstruct the family expenses in order to approach welfare levels during 1920s. In order to complete this exercise, we will take on account self-consume because Gijón at that time, was an industrial port but with very rural surroundings, where working families combined different activities: agrarian tasks with varied industrial activities (naval building, metal graphic industries, fish-processing, port activities, etc.). We will use many different sources: nominative population census in 1924, company data, and sociodemographic data from the municipality, workers associations’ documentation, and so on. (Show less)