Measurements of the historical 'standard of living' have formed a major preoccupation for social and economic historians for more than a century. The debate over the standard of living has been dominated by two broad groups of historians. Those who have thought that general living standards improved during the period of classic industrial revolution (roughly between 1780-1850), and those who have claimed that the welfare of people underwent a general decline. Those who have assumed …showed first 75 words of 580 total…

…showed last 75 words of 580 total…declined. In order to get around some of the problems presented by the use of real-wage data in calculating living standards, historians have also looked to evidence of household budgets: budgets that have survived which indicate the income and expenditure of families. Like anecdotal evidence, these sources suffered from a bias in selection. Sometimes household budgets were elicited by social inquirers who were concerned with distinguishing the spendthrift household from the household which practised frugality.