Economic History of Unpaid Domestic Labor in Britain

A source of an economic valuation of unpaid domestic labor, historically estimated to represent approximately 20 percent of total income. It was created by Jane Humphries using maintenance costs of British workers to impute the value of unpaid domestic labor from market equivalents for households without domestic servants.

Use Cases

• Analyze the historical contribution of unpaid domestic labor to total income using imputed valuation data.
• Study the relationship between paid domestic labor costs and imputed unpaid labor values for British households.
• Investigate the economic impact of unpaid caring labor on standard historical narratives using aggregated household data.

Strengths

• The analysis is grounded in a specific historical estimate that unpaid domestic labor represented about 20 percent of total income.
• The dataset focuses on a historically understudied economic factor: unpaid caring labor.
• The methodology uses maintenance costs of British workers to derive market-equivalent valuations.

Limitations

• The dataset's specific variables, sample size, and temporal coverage are not detailed in the provided description.
• The valuation method relies on imputation from market equivalents, which may introduce assumptions not fully described.
• The geographic scope is limited to Britain, limiting generalizability.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

The data was created by imputing the value of unpaid domestic labor from the maintenance costs of British workers, which cover material inputs and domestic services.

Freshness

The record was last updated on February 23, 2026.

Geography

Britain