| Post: | Professor of Economic History (History) |
| Other posts: | Senior Lecturer in Economic History (Centre for the History of War and Society) |
| Location: | Arts A A174 |
| Email: | I.S.Gazeley@sussex.ac.uk |
Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 2458 |
| UK: | (01273) 606755 ext. 2458 |
| International: | +44 1273 606755 ext. 2458 |
| download vCarddownload vCard to your mobile | |
Biography
I am and economic and social historian of modern Britain. I have particular interests in the labour market, poverty and inequality, health and nutrition. I have written a book on Poverty in Britain 1900-65 (2003) and, in conjunction with Nicholas Crafts (Warwick) and Andy Newell (Sussex), I edited and contributed to Work and Pay in Twentieth Century Britain (OUP 2007). I am currently Principal Investigator on a £1.1m ESRC funded project on Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904-1960 (with Andrew Newell, Co-Investigator), which is funded until 2013. This project involves the digitization of the Ministry of Labour 1953-4 Household Expenditure Survey and the creation of a web-based centre on British Living Standards, which will be hosted at the Poverty Research Centre at Sussex. This project was recently reported in the Daily Telegraph. I am also working on a project with Claire Langhamer (Sussex) on happiness and economic well-being in 1930s Britain, using data collected by Mass-Observation. I believe that important changes in economic and social relations occurred during wartime periods and I am currently Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for War and Society. I supervise a number of Sussex D.Phil students working in this area as well as on topics relating to by my main research interests.
I did my first degree in Economic and Economic History at the University of Warwick and my D.Phil at St Antony’s College, Oxford. I held a Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford before joining Sussex in 1985
Role
Professor of Economic History.
My research has been based on the construction and analysis of micro-datasets from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, clustered around the theme of British living standard measurement. Research for my D.Phil involved extracting and analysed the data relating to food consumption and nutrition from late nineteenth century and early twentieth century social surveys, including the survey carried out by the United States Commissioner of Labor 1890-91, which was the largest household survey of the nineteenth century (1,021 British households), as well as the more well-know surveys carried out by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree. Recently, in conjunction with Nicola Verdon (Sussex) and Sara Horrell (Cambridge), I have begun to revisit the evidence contained in these social surveys to examine the changes in the living standards of agricultural workers’ households in Britain between 1790 and 1918.
In the 1990s I was Principal Investigator on two ESRC funded projects concerned with employment and wage-determination in interwar Britain and occupational wage inequality in the first half of the twentieth century. The first project (with Patricia Rice, Oxford University) was concerned with explaining changes in employment in manufacturing industries during the interwar period, and appraising explanations of the causes of interwar unemployment. Previous work on this topic had largely been carried out using time-series econometrics on annual data. We constructed a new quarterly dataset of output, employment and wages for several key stable industries and found strong econometric evidence that located the explanation for falling levels of employment in staple industries during the Great Depression on the demand side (a decline in the volume of world trade). In the second project I extended this quarterly data on wages to create new monthly occupational wage indices for key manufacturing industries in Britain between 1914 and 1950. The headline finding of this research was a complete re-appraisal of the gender wage gap in Britain during the Second World War, which hitherto had been considered as fairly stable. In contrast, I found that in a swath of wartime manufacturing industries, gender pay inequality (measured in terms of both the wage per hour and earnings per hour) decreased by about 15-20 percent between 1938 and 1950.
From 2000, I returned to research concerned with the extent of subsistence poverty in Britain in the period before the 1960s. Andrew Newell (Sussex) and I investigated the impact that the choice of equivalence scale had on the estimation of poverty in the famous social surveys of Booth, Rowntree and Bowley. We estimated Engels type food-share equations using the 1890-1 United States Commissioner of Labor household expenditure survey data and compared these estimates with those of pioneer social investigators. We found that Rowntree’s scale was significantly more generous than Bowley’s. Our conclusion was that this mistake led Rowntree to over-estimate the extent of Primary Poverty in York in 1900.
More recently, supported by a research grant from The Nuffield Foundation, Andrew Newell and I have digitised and analysed the extant returns from the first official large scale British household expenditure enquiry, carried out by the Board of Trade in 1904. We have used this data to provide the first national estimates of subsistence poverty among working households at the turn of the twentieth century. Adjusting to make the survey as representative of the working population as we are able, we conclude that between one in five and one in six working households in Britain had insufficient income to meet their households’ subsistence needs, as defined by Bowley.
I am currently Principal Investigator on a £1.14m ESRC project on ‘The Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904-1960’ (with Andrew Newell, Co-Investigator). The British Living Standards Project (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/britishlivingstandards/) is funded until 2013. The eradication of extreme poverty is the first of the United Nations’ millennium goals, yet we understand surprisingly little about its elimination as living standards rose in the Western economies during the twentieth century. For instance, for Britain, we do not know the precise roles played by the welfare state, self-help, education, reductions in family size, and improvements in real wages driven by technological progress. Our understanding of the British experience is limited by the lack of regular national surveys in the period before 1960. The key national data sets are three household expenditure surveys, for 1904, 1937/8 and 1953/4. Collectively, these three data sets constitute the most important record of economic life at the time. The 1953/4 expenditure survey is the largest of the twentieth century (12,900 households). It was carried out at an important point near the beginning of the post-Second World War period, when wartime rationing and controls were coming to an end, but before the affluence of the Golden Age had been widely distributed. Thus the 1953/4 survey acts as a natural benchmark for comparison with earlier and later investigations. It is unique among British household expenditure surveys because it separately records the expenditures of individuals within the household. Abel-Smith and Townsend used a 25 percent sample of the lowest per capita income groups from this survey for their The Poor and the Poorest (1965), which was hugely influential in setting the social policy agenda of the 1960s. These data have a number of other important long-term potential uses for social research, either as a stand-alone resource or in conjunction with the post-1960 Family Expenditure Survey records.
Part of the work for the British Living Standards Project involves examining changes in food consumption and nutrition during the first half of the twentieth century. Andrew Newell and I have a series of working papers that provide revised estimates of working-class food consumption and nutritional attainment for the period before the Second World War. Recently. Sara Horrell (Cambridge University) and I have examined the nutrition of argicultural labourers' households during the industrial revolutuion. We conclude that this important element of household welfare showed no discernible improvement between 1787-96 and 1835-46, thus endorsing pessimistic views of living standards improvements over the first four decades of the nineteenth century.
I am also involved in a research project with Claire Langhamer (Sussex) on happiness and economic well-being in 1930s Britain, based on the analysis of a Mass-Observation study carried out in 1938. This inquiry asked respondents to define what happiness meant to them. This was followed-up with a questionnaire that asked individuals to provide details of their occupation, employment status, age and gender, and then to rank order eight factors making for happiness. The survey of 223 individuals was carried out at an important point during the interwar years, when fears of war were growing and unemployment remained stubbornly high.
Recent Publications:
"The first poverty line? Davies and Eden's investigation of rural poverty in 18th century England" (with Nicola Verdon, Sheffield Hallam University). Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2012.09.001
"Income and Living Standards, 1870-2010" in Floud, R and Johnson, P (ed) The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain Vol.2, forthcoming 2013
"Nutrition in the English agricultural labourer's household over the course of the long nineteenth century" (with Sara Horrell, University of Cambridge). Economic History Review, forthcoming
‘The First World War and Working Class Food Consumption in Britain’ (with Andrew Newell, University of Sussex). European Review of Economic History, forthcoming
‘'The Meanings of Happiness in Mass Observation's Bolton' (with Claire Langhamer, University of Sussex ). History Workshop Journal, Issue 74 Autumn 2012
‘The End of Destitution’ (with Andrew Newell, University of Sussex), Oxford Economic Papers (2011), 64(1): pp.80-102 doi:10.1093/oep/gpr032,
‘Poverty in Edwardian Britain’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex University), Economic History Review 64, 1 (2011), pp. 52-71 and published early on-line doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00523.
'Why was urban over-crowding much more severe in Scotland than in the rest of the British Isles? Evidence from the first (1904) official household expenditure survey’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex University and Peter Scott, Reading University). European Review of Economic History, Vol.15, 01 (2011) pp.127-151 and early on-line 23 November 2010 doi:10.1017/S1361491610000195
‘Women’s Pay in British Industry during World War Two’ Economic History Review, 2008, 63:3, pp.651-671
Crafts, N.F.R., Gazeley, I and Newell, A (Ed) Work and Pay in Twentieth Century Britain. Oxford University Press (Oxford University Press 2007) pp.1-339
‘Manual Work and Pay in Britain 1900-65’ in Crafts, N.F.R., Gazeley, I and Newell, A (Ed) Work and Pay in Twentieth Century Britain. (Oxford University Press 2007, pp.55-56).
'Unemployment in Britain (with Andrew Newell, University of Sussex) in Crafts, N.F.R., Gazeley, I and Newell, A (Ed) Work and Pay in Twentieth Century Britain. Oxford University Press (Oxford University Press 2007, pp.225-264)
‘The Levelling of pay in Britain during The Second World War’ European Review of Economic History, 2006 10, pp.175-204.
Discussion Papers:
2012 Gazeley, I.S. and Newell, A.T., 'Urban Working Class Food Consumption and Nutrition in 1904'
2012 Newell, A and Gazeley, I 'The Declines in Infant Mortality and Fertility: Evidence from British Cities in Demographic Transition'.
2010 Gazeley, I.S. and Newell, A.T., 'The First World War and Working Class Food Consumption in Britain'
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1708743
2009 Gazeley, I.S. and Newell, A.T., 'No Room to Live: Overcrowding in Edwardian Cities'
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1078888
2009 Gazeley, I.S. and Newell, A.T., 'The End of Destitution'
2008 Gazeley, I.S, and Newell, A.T, 'Overcrowding in British Cities in 1904'
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1078888
2008 Gazeley, I.S, and Newell, A.T 'Poverty in Britain in 1904: An Early Social Survey Rediscovered'
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1022926
Research Grant Capture
Principal Investigator ESRC grant RES-062-23-2054
‘Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904-60’ (with Andrew Newell Sussex, (Co-Investigator) and Michael Hawkins, Sussex (Technical Director))
Award date February 2010 – January 2013 , £1,139,000.
This project employs four post-doctoral research officers:
Dr Samantha Shave, 0.9FTE October 2010- August 2012; 0.2FTE August 2012-January 2013
Dr Mintewab Bezabih, 1.0FTE November 2010 - October 2012
Dr Rebecca Searle, 0.8FTE August 2011-January 2013
Dr Kevin Reynolds ) O.5FTE April 2012-August 2012, 0.8FTE September 2012- January 2013
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/britishlivingstandards/about
Co-Investigator Nuffield Foundation grant SSG/01220/G
‘Family Expenditure in Britain in 1904’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex)
Award date July 2005- March 2006 £7,223
Principal Investigator ESRC grant R000221394
'Intra-Industry Wage Differentials and Skill Premia in British Manufacturing, 1914-45'
Award date January 1995- April 1996, £14,040
Principal Investigator ESRC grant B-00-23-2230
'Employment and Wage Determination in Interwar Britain: A Disaggregated Approach' (with Patricia Rice, Oxford University)
Award date April 1988 –March 1990, £27, 000
Ph.D Students
Supervised and jointly supervised:
Awarded (Research Council funded)
1. Selina Todd (ESRC funded) 1999-2003 (D.Phil awarded May 2003) ‘ Young Women, Employment and the Family in Interwar England’.
2. Francis Graham-Dixon (AHRC funded) 2005-8 (D.Phil awarded Dec 2008) 'Civilising the Germans: British occupation policy and the refugee and expellee crisis, 1944-1949’
3. Ben Jones (ESRC funded) 2005- 8 (D.Phil awarded January 2009) ‘Neighbourhood, family and home: the working class experience in mid-twentieth century Brighton’.
4. Rebecca Searle (AHRC Collaborative Award, with the Imperial war Museum, London) 2006- ‘Gender, Modernisation and National Identity in Visual Representations of the Aircraft Industry in Britain during the Second World War.’ Awarded 2011
Awarded (non-Research Council funded)
1. Andrew Elsby 2002-2004 (submitted for D.Phil after two years and awarded Sept 2004), ‘British Foreign Policy Towards the Soviet Union over Germany in the Immediate Post-World War Two Period: A Causal Analysis’.
2. Elke Side (Sussex Graduate Bursary holder) 2006- 'Children of the red Flag'. Growing up in a communist family: a comparative study of the British and Dutch communist movement 1940-1984’ Awarded 2011.
Todd is now a Senior Lecturer in History, University of Oxford and Jones is a l lecturer in modern British History at the University of East Anglia. Searle holds a Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Award 2013
Current (Research Council funded)
1. Matthew Homewood (AHRC funded, FT 2011-), ‘Agricultural Migration in nineteenth century England’
Current (non-Research Council funded)
1. David Boyne (PT) 2006- ‘Racial Attitudes of Ordinary Britons in SEAC, 1941-5’
2. Chris Kempshall (PT) 2007- ‘Great War Myths and Memories: Britain and France
3. David Rowley (PT) 2007- ‘Poor Livings and Destitute Clergy, 1700-1900
4. David Eyles (PT) 2009-‘Combat motivation and the Falklands War’
5. Sian Edwards (FT) 2009- ‘Youth, Leisure and the English Countryside 1930-60’
6. Teresa Sterling (PT) 2010 ‘ Cabinet record books and Cabinet Government, 1945-1974
7. Karen Leanders (PT) 2011 Indian Troops in the First World War
8. Natacha Chevalier (FT 2011- ) ‘Changes in eating habits in Britain across WW2’
I am currently on research leave funded by the ESRC. The undergraduade courses that I have taught recently or developed are:
Level 2/3
Britain in the Twentieth Century: History optional course
Britain and the Second World War: History Special Subject
1916: The Somme: History optional course
M.A. Level
I teach a core course in the Contemporary History MA, Historical Skills and Methods and have taugh an optional course Britain Between the Wars. I developed the innovative optional course Documentary in Contemporary History. The year 2000 and 2001 cohort’s film won ‘Best Documentary’ at the Imperial War Museum’s student film festivals. This course is currently taught by Lucy Robinson. Both this course, and the Historical Skills and Methods course, are taught using (elements of) group work and assessment.
Current D.Phil students
1. Elke Side (Sussex Graduate Bursary holder) 2006- 'Children of the red Flag'. Growing up in a communist family: a comparative study of the British and Dutch communist movement 1940-1984’
2. Rebecca Searle (AHRC Collaborative Award, with the Imperial war Museum, London) 2006- ‘Gender, Modernisation and National Identity in Visual Representations of the Aircraft Industry in Britain during the Second World War’
3. David Boyne (PT) 2006- ‘Racial Attitudes of Ordinary Britons in SEAC, 1941-5’
4. Chris Kempshall (PT) 2007- ‘Great War Myths and Memories: Britain and France 1918-2008’
5. John Hodgkins (PT) 2007- ‘Andrew Mearns and the Bitter Cry of Outcast London’
6. David Rowley (PT) 2007- ‘Poor Livings and Destitute Clergy: the Economic Situation 1700-1900’
7. David Eyles (PT) 2009-‘Combat motivation and the Falklands War’
Previous D.Phil students
1. Selina Todd (ESRC funded) 1999-2003 (D.Phil awarded May 2003) ‘ Young Women, Employment and the Family in Interwar England’.
2. Andrew Elsby 2002-2004 (D.Phil awarded Sept 2004), ‘British Foreign Policy Towards the Soviet Union over Germany in the Immediate Post-World War Two Period: A Causal Analysis’.
3. Francis Graham-Dixon (AHRC funded) 2005-8 (D.Phil awarded Dec 2008) 'Civilising the Germans: British occupation policy and the refugee and expellee crisis, 1944-1949’
4. Ben Jones (ESRC funded) 2005- 8 (D.Phil awarded January 2009) ‘Neighbourhood, family and home: the working class experience in mid-twentieth century Brighton’.
Student Consultation
My Office Hourss are:
Monday 2.00-3.00
Wednesday 12.00-1.00
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2013) The First World War and working-class food consumption in Britain. European Review of Economic History, 17 (1). pp. 71-94. ISSN 1361-4916
Gazeley, Ian and Horrell, Sara (2012) Nutrition in the English agricultural labourer's household over the course of the long nineteenth century. Economic History Review. ISSN 0013-0117
Gazeley, Ian and Langhamer, Claire (2012) The meanings of Happiness in Mass-Observation's Bolton. History Workshop Journal. ISSN 1477-4569
Gazeley, Ian and Langhamer, Claire (2012) The meanings of happiness in Mass Observation's Bolton. History Workshop Journal, 75 (1). pp. 159-189. ISSN 1363-3554
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2012) The end of destitution: evidence from urban British working households 1904-1937. Oxford Economic Papers, 64 (1). pp. 80-102. ISSN 0030-7653
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2011) Poverty in Edwardian Britain. Economic History Review, 64 (1). pp. 52-71. ISSN 0013-0117
Gazeley, Ian, Newell, Andrew and Scott, Peter (2011) Why was urban over-crowding much more severe in Scotland than in the rest of the British Isles? Evidence from the first (1904) official household expenditure survey. European Review of Economic History, 15 (1). pp. 127-151. ISSN 1361-4916
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2010) The First World War and Working Class Food Consumption in Britain.
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2009) The end of destitution. Working Paper. Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn.
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2009) No Room to Live: Urban Overcrowding in Edwardian Britain.
Gazeley, Ian (2008) Women's pay in British industry during the Second World War. Economic History Review, 61 (3). pp. 651-671. ISSN 1468-0289
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2007) Poverty in Britain in 1904: An Early Social Survey Rediscovered.
Crafts, Nicholas, Gazeley, Ian, Newell, Andrew and Unset, eds. (2007) Work and Pay in Twentieth - Century Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199280582
Gazeley, Ian (2006) The levelling of pay in Britain during the Second World War. European Review of Economic History, 10 (2). pp. 175-204. ISSN 1474-0044
Gazeley, Ian (2003) Poverty in Britain, 1900-65. Social History in Perspective . Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780333716199
Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (2000) Rowntree Revisited: Poverty in Britain in 1900. Explorations in Economic History, 37 (2). pp. 174-188. ISSN 0014-4983
