To what extent did the Industrial Revolution generate a rapid increase in standards-of-living for the working class?
Standard of living can be a difficult concept to measure or define, given its normative nature, but it can consist of different factors such as level of income, quality and quantity of goods and services available to consumers that can lead to wellbeing. The industrial revolution shifted the occupations of the working class towards manual related industries such as manufacturing, given the increase in urbanisation but it is clear that a large proportion of the population did not experience a rapid increase in standard of living. Those researching this topic can be split into two categories, optimists who believe in increased standard of living and pessimists, that believe in the opposite. Over this period, the working class had to work in poor working conditions with ‘little to show in terms of living standards’ according to Marx as well as on many more days during the year (Voth, 2004). Real wages increased by a substantial amount, by more than 80% for adult men from 1820 t...