Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T09:43:08.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Counting Housework: New Estimates of Real Product in the United States, 1800–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Nancy Folbre  and
Barnet Wagman
Nancy Folbre
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003
Barnet Wagman
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ 08240-9988.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Women engaged primarily in the provision of domestic services for family members make important contributions to total output. This article provides estimates of the size and sectoral allocation of the nonmarket household work force in the United States between 1800 and 1860. Those estimates are then used as a basis for several alternative imputations of the value of these women's work, which modify the historical picture of economic growth over this period.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 275 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

References

REFERENCES

Abel, Marjorie, and Folbre, Nancy, “Women's Market Participation in the Late 19th Century: A Methodology for Revising Estimates,” Historical Methods, 23 (Fall 1990), pp. 167–76.Google Scholar
Beecher, Catherine, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (New York, 1974).Google Scholar
Beecher, Catherine, and Stowe, Harriet Beecher, The American Woman's Home (New York, 1869).Google Scholar
Beneria, Lourdes, “Conceptualizing the Labour Force: The Underestimation of Women's Activities,” Journal of Development Studies, 17 (04 1981), pp. 10–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bose, Christine, “Devaluing Women's Work: The Undercount of Women's Employment in 1900,” in Bose, Christine, Feldberg, Roslyn, and Sokoloff, Natalie, eds., Hidden Aspects of Women's Work (New York, 1987), pp. 95–115.Google Scholar
Boydston, Jeanne, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York, 1991).Google Scholar
Census of Massachusetts, 1875 (Boston, 1877).Google Scholar
Chadeau, Ann, “Measuring Household Activities: Some International Comparisons,” The Review of Income and Wealth, 31 (09 1985), pp. 237–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York, 1983).Google Scholar
Coxe, Tench, “Digest of Manufactures,” in American State Papers, vol. 2: Finance (Philadelphia, 1814).Google Scholar
Craig, Lee, “The Value of Household Labor in Antebellum Northern Agriculture,” this Journal, 51 (03 1991), pp. 67–81.Google Scholar
David, Paul, “The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures,” this Journal, 27 (06 1967), pp. 151–97.Google Scholar
David, Paul, “Understanding the Economics of QWERTY: The Necessity of History,” in Parker, William N., ed., Economic History and the Modern Economist (New York, 1986), pp. 30–49.Google Scholar
Dudden, Faye E., Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, CT, 1983).Google Scholar
Eisner, Robert, “Extended Accounts for National Income and Product,” Journal of Economic Literature, 26 (12 1988), pp. 1611–84.Google Scholar
Folbre, Nancy, “The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth Century Economic Thought,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16 (Spring 1991), pp. 463–84.Google Scholar
Folbre, Nancy, and Abel, Marjorie, “Women's Work and Women's Households: Gender Bias in the U.S. Census,” Social Research, 56 (Fall 1989), pp. 545–70.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Victor, Women's Quest for Economic Equality (Cambridge, MA, 1988).Google Scholar
Gallman, Robert, “Estimates of American National Product Made Before the Civil War,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 9 (04 1961), pp. 397–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallman, Robert, “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1909,” in Brady, Dorothy S., ed., Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States After 1800, NBER Studies in Income and Wealth Vol. 30 (New York, 1966), pp. 3–76.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, “The Female Labor Force and American Economic Growth, 1890–1980,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E., eds., Long–Term Factors in American Economic Growth, NBER Studies in Income and Wealth Vol. 51 (Chicago, 1986), pp. 557–604.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt-Clermont, Luisella, Unpaid Work in the Household (Geneva, 1982).Google Scholar
Goldschmidt-Clermont, Luisella, Economic Evaluations of Unpaid Household Work: Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania (Geneva, 1987).Google Scholar
Hartmann, Heidi, “The Family as a Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 6 (Spring 1981), pp. 366–94.Google Scholar
Humphries, Jane, “Enclosures, Common Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” this Journal, 50 (03 1990), pp. 17–42.Google Scholar
Jensen, Joan M., Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750–1850 (New Haven, 1986).Google Scholar
King, Willford I. et al. , Income in the United States, Its Amount and Distribution (New York, 1921).Google Scholar
Kuznets, Simon, National Income and Its Composition, 1919–1938 (New York, 1941).Google Scholar
Lebergott, Stanley, Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record Since 1800 (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Matthews, Glenna, Just a Housewife: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America (New York, 1987).Google Scholar
Reid, Margaret, Economics of Household Production (New York, 1934).Google Scholar
Seaman, Ezra, Essays on the Progress of Nations (Detroit and New York, 1846).Google Scholar
Seaman, Ezra, Essays on the Progress of Nations (2nd edn., New York, 1852).Google Scholar
Tryon, Rolla, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860 (Chicago, 1917).Google Scholar
U.S. Congress, Senate, Memorial of Mary F. Eastman, Henrietta L. T. Woolcott, and Others, Officers of the Association for the Advancement of Women, Praying That the Tenth Census May Contain a Just Enumeration of Women As Laborers and Producers, 45th Cong., 2d sess., 1878. S. Doc. 84, Vol. 2, Serial 1786.Google Scholar
Waring, Marilyn, If Women Counted: Towards a Feminist Economics (New York, 1988).Google Scholar
Weiss, Thomas, The Service Sector in the United States, 1839–1899 (New York, 1975).Google Scholar
Weiss, Thomas, “Revised Estimates of the United States Workforce, 1800–1860,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E., eds., Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, NBER Studies in Income and Wealth Vol. 51 (Chicago, 1986), pp. 641–78.Google Scholar
Weiss, Thomas, “Economic Growth Before 1860: Revised Conjectures,” NBER Working Paper No. 7 (10 1989).Google Scholar
Weiss, Thomas, “U.S. Labor Force Estimates and Economic Growth, 1800–1860,” in Gallman, Robert and Wallis, John, eds., The Standard of Living in Nineteenth Century America (Chicago, 1992).Google Scholar