Real Wages in the British Industrial Revolution

The paper compares Feinstein’s and Clark’s consumer price and real wage indices for theBritish industrial revolution. The sources for their weights and component price series areevaluated. While some of Clark’s innovations are improvements, many of his changesdegrade the price index. A new price index is developed using the best components ofClark’s and Feinstein’s. This index is much closer to Feinstein’s than to Clark’s. Theimplied growth in real wages is also close to Feinstein’s and contradicts Clark’s ‘optimistic’view of rising working class living standards during the industrial revolution....