Working Class Income Research Articles

Incomes and income inequality in Stockholm, 1870–1970: Evidence from micro data

This paper analyzes incomes and income inequality in Stockholm from 1870 to 1970. The paper builds on a new dataset of 38,022 randomly sampled Stockholm residents 1870–1950, with information on income, occupation, age, gender, and household composition. This is complemented by the Census of 1930 and a Statistics Sweden sample for 1960 and 1970. Incomes were very unequally distributed between 1870 and 1920, with Gini coefficients of pre-tax income around sixty. After 1920 inequality fell quite steadily. A drop in capital incomes contributed, and when looking at post-tax incomes the growth of progressive taxation after 1930 also contributed, but most of the high inequality up to 1920 and equalization after this date depended on the distribution of labour income. In the early 1900s professional groups had huge income advantages over workers, but this advantage was drastically reduced after 1920 when working-class incomes grew rapidly. An important mechanism of income growth was the upgrading of the jobs structure, highlighting the importance of structural change, beyond the Kuznetsian binary of agriculture–manufacturing, for understanding long-run economic inequality.

Improving the Fortunes of America’s Working Class

The prosperity of America’s working class depends on trends in their employment and earnings, but also on the social protection and income supplements they receive as a result of government policy. Since 2000, working-class wages climbed slowly once we account for the increase in consumer prices. Nonetheless, the total personal income of lower- and middle-income families increased considerably faster than their wages. As documented in the article, the income gains were in part the result of rising fringe benefits from employers and even more the result of rising government subsidies for health insurance and social protection. The article recommends a range of policies to increase the pace of working-class income gains, including macroeconomic policies that increase the duration of economic expansions, reforms in labor law to improve workers’ bargaining power, boosting the minimum wage, and revising occupational training of non-college-educated workers to boost their earning power.

Authoritarianism and Social Policy

Authoritarianism seems to be emerging as the default mode of global capitalism. In the absence of reliable economic growth, and with working-class incomes in long-term stagnation, both liberal and social democratic parties have lost support in many countries, and authoritarian regimes have come to power in several. But poor people in the USA, UK and Europe have long experienced coercion, being forced to accept low-paid, insecure work or face benefits sanctions. As a growing proportion of workers have come to rely on supplements such as tax credits, the working class has been divided, and opportunistic authoritarian politicians have mobilised the anxiety and resentment of those on the margins of poverty. This article argues that only an active civil society, with voluntary agencies uncompromised by involvement in coercive policies, along with universal, unconditional Basic Incomes for all citizens, can reverse these trends.

Is unconditional basic income feasible in capitalism?

This paper examines whether the concept of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) can be realised within the framework of capitalism. After describing the essence of UBI, I present its historical antecedents, rival concepts and the pros and cons. The paper then contrasts the effect of UBI on wage labour with aspects of capital accumulation and makes an assessment of the obstacles to the introduction of UBI. It deduces why and how UBI might become unsustainable in cases where it is implemented within the framework of a profit-oriented and property-based society and concludes that as UBI would put a floor under the working-class income, restrict the possibilities of suppressing the wage share and increase the rate of exploitation, it is unlikely to be introduced and certainly cannot be maintained as long as the socio-economic system is based on the profit motive.

The diet of the nation: The state, family budgets and the 1930s nutritional crisis in Britain

Abstract In 1930s Britain a new attention to physical culture emerged in the shape of a National Fitness Campaign. At the same time a fierce political debate took place over the state of nutritional health of the nation. Left wing activists argued that the working classes were significantly malnourished due to an insufficiency of income. The government responded by arguing that it was the domestic ignorance of the working class housewife that was the problem. This debate raged in public forums from parliament to popular press—the term ‘Hungry England’ becoming a common catchphrase. It enrolled a host of medical experts, public bodies and voluntary organisations. Surveys of poor neighbourhoods were conducted to determine nutritional health. Based on family household budgets, these surveys revealed that working class incomes were insufficient to achieve optimum dietary needs and inferences were drawn regarding the nutritional state of the nation. Ultimately, a host of welfare policies to combat these nutritional deficiencies were initiated and we witness the rise of the British Welfare State. This paper examines the polarised political debates of this period from a governmentality perspective (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose & Miller, 1992). The framework facilitates an understanding of the way in which diverse actors became enrolled in the two nutritional discourses and the mediating role of experts in the process. It also reveals the influential role of calculative technologies, particularly the budget, within the programmatic of government. Finally, this theoretical approach highlights the governance of the body inherent in these dietary and fitness interventions. The notion of the fit and healthy disciplined body that emerged during this time period reflects the cultural trends to come in terms of contemporary obsessions with diet and body image.

Towards a New Distributive Principle of Wealth Beyond the Capitalist Market, the State and Labor

High unemployment and falls in working class incomes are affecting billions of people around the world: they are being pauperized. Neoliberals and Keynesians consider it possible to achieve full employment by means of applying labor flexibility policies and economic growth. However, surpassing the chimera that is full employment, the rampant poverty is attributable to the principle that regulates the distribution of wealth within capitalism. The socialists of every guild have proposed the principle “to each according to his work.” Nevertheless, there is an irrefutable fact that calls this principle into question: technological development. Therefore, only a new distributive principle of wealth—one that goes beyond the capitalist market, the State and labor itself—will bring a global economy without poverty.

Contextualising Organised Labour in Expansion and Crisis: The Case of the US

AbstractWhile, as Marx argued, periods of expanded accumulation present the best conditions for increasing working-class living standards, the expansion that began in 1982 was based in large part on the rapidfallin the value of labour-power in the US. This recovery and rapid rise in the rate of surplus-value in the US was enabled by the collapse of union-resistance beginning in 1979 and the strategic choices made by union-leaders across the economy from that time on. The expansion was sustained in the 1980s by dramatic work-reorganisation, enabled by the embrace of labour-management cooperation-schemes by much of the trade-union leadership, and the restructuring of several major industries that undermined the industry-wide bargaining on which rising postwar incomes had been based. Productivity, boosted by lean production-methods, would continue to outstrip real wages up until the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 and resume again in the wake of a weak recovery in the US. The rapid geographic expansion of capital after 1990 provided new investment-possibilities, as did the explosion of financial instruments. What stands out, however, is that rising productivity, far from providing the basis for increases in working-class income, had become coupled with flat or declining real wages and a fall in the value of labour-power as the necessary condition to sustain almost any level of growth in the real economy. The link between productivity and wage-increases, central to Keynesian and institutional collective-bargaining theory, had been broken and Marx’s idea of the most favourable conditions stood on its head. The breaking of this link had, in the final analysis, been an outcome of class-struggle in which capital had the upper hand. All of this underlines the failed strategies and practices of most of the trade-union leadership in the US since 1979. New approaches to the workplace and broader forms of mobilisation will be needed. Signs of worker-resistance to the latest neoliberal clampdowns in Latin America, Europe, China, and even the US, however, may point to a renewed era of intensified class-struggle.

Real incomes of the British middle class, 1760‐1850: the experience of clerks at the East India Company

T he study of middle-class income and spending patterns in Britain during the industrial revolution lags seriously behind that of workingclass incomes. In contrast to the wealth of information on working-class experience, our knowledge of middle-class income and spending patterns before 1850 is confined to a small handful of studies and to indirect or impressionistic evidence of middle-class social behaviour, styles of living, dress, housing and furnishings, the food consumed, and servants employed.2 New questions designed to find answers to the perennial problems of income distribution and living standards, the sources of demand for food and industrial goods, the 'Kuznets curve', and so on, are now being asked in ways that point to the pressing need for more detailed knowledge of the development of middle-class income and spending patterns during the industrial revolution.3 Until we gain this detailed knowledge, answers to these questions will remain as elusive as ever. The purpose of this article is to present new evidence on middle-class incomes based on the nominal and real earnings of 'established' clerks employed in the home (London) service of the East India Company between 1760 and 1850.4 It also introduces a new index of living costs for middleI Many people assisted in the preparation of this article. In particular I thank Helen Bridge, Catherine Prior, and Stephanie Haxell who acted as my research assistants at various times. Stephanie Haxell carried out the unenviable task of converting the salary records of the East India Company into electronic form. Wayne Naughton, Ross Cunningham, and Christine Donnelly assisted with computer and statistical analysis. Bob Jackson, and Professors Colin Forster, Barrie Smith, and Roy Church, and anonymous referees made valuable comments on earlier drafts. 2 Specialist studies of middle-class earnings and employment before 1850 can be found in Williamson, Did British capitalism breed inequality?; Boot, 'Salaries and career earnings'; Rubinstein, Elites and the wealthy; Banks, Prosperity and parenthood; Musgrove, 'Middle-class education' (1959); idem, 'Middle-class education' (1961); Perkin, 'Middle-class education'. I Williamson, Did British capitalism breed inequality?; Feinstein, 'Williamson curve'; Jackson, 'Structure of pay'; Clark et al., 'British food puzzle'; Horrell, 'Home demand'. 4The company employed both 'established' clerks and 'extra' clerks. Established clerks formed part of the establishment of the company and occupied all the more demanding and responsible posts in the home service. Extra clerks first appeared late in the eighteenth century when the volume of work began to grow rapidly. They increased in number in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, then decreased quickly after 1830. Although some held quite responsible positions, they were usually employed in routine tasks of copying, recording, and maintaining records of the work of the established clerks. Established clerks were occasionally selected from among the extra clerks, especially at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but this avenue was closed in the 1820s. Established clerks entering from an extra clerk's position were given credit for their experience. This credit was valued for salary purposes at the rate of 5 years as an extra clerk being equal to 3 years as an established clerk. This practice has been followed for the purposes of calculating the length of recognized experience when calculating experience-related salaries for this article.

The Affluent Worker or the Divided Party? Explaining the Transformation of the ALP in the 1950s

This article argues that the Australian Labor Party was transformed in the 1950s, shedding its rhetorical commitment to socialism as well as many of its democratic ties to the organised working class. It also attempts to explain this transformation. The argument that this transformation was the product of rising working-class incomes and declining class consciousness is considered, before being rejected on both empirical and theoretical grounds. An alternative political explanation, which focuses on the interactions between the Party, its working-class constituency, and its leadership, is then offered. The article thereby aims not only to reconceptualise a specific moment in the history of Labor, but to reorient our theoretical approach to the Party, and our understanding of political change in the early postwar decades.

Paupers and Pensioners: Past and Present

ABSTRACTThis article compares treatment of the elderly today and in the mid-nineteenth century. The starting point is David Thomson's recent claim (Ageing and Society, 4, 1984) that welfare-state pension benefits are not as valuable, relative to the incomes of non-pensioners, as were the poor-law pensions of Dickensian England. Thomson's calculations of incomes and of the value and availability of pensions in the mid-nineteenth century are critically reassessed. It is argued that welfare-state pensions are superior to poor-law pensions not only in absolute terms but also as a proportion of average working-class incomes. The paper concludes with some comments on long-term trends in pensioners' living standards and the implications for pension policy.

The Top-Heavy Economy: Managerial Greed and Unproductive Labor

For the past fifteen years the United States economy has struggled, but the burden of this struggle has not been borne by all. This article examines the economic trends of three separate groups of Americans within an overall "master" trend: the growth of nonproductive labor — particularly the growth of managerial and supervisory occupations. The three groups are the working class, the managerial sector (especially high ranking corporate executives) and capitalists. The research shows that a class divergence has taken place in recent years. Working class incomes have stagnated but managerial sector income is on the rise. Compensation for corporate executives has risen sharply in recent years, and capitalist profits are also surging upward.

Residential Desegregation Potential

Abstract Assuming that desegregation is a desirable long-range goal, this paper examines the potential for reasonable progress toward that goal, using data from eleven of the twelve largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. First, a Negro working-class income group is identified as possible candidates for desegregation. Second, suburban housing costs are compared with the ability of ghetto residents to pay. Although present new suburban housing is too expensive for most working-class Negroes, neither costs of existing housing nor current income levels appear as significant restrictions on Negro suburbanization. Furthermore, existing federal housing aids can facilitate construction of suburban low and moderate income housing. Given commitment to use of existing tools, a substantial amount of desegregation can now occur within the existing suburban housing supply.