Professor Ian Gazeley

Professor Ian Gazeley

Professor

Department of Economic History

Room No
SAR 6.08
Office Hours
Thursday 15:00-16:00 Book via StudentHub
Languages
English
Key Expertise
Modern British History, labour market, poverty, inequality

About me

I am an economic and social historian of modern Britain with particular interests in the labour market, poverty and inequality, food consumption 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). More recently, I have published articles on poverty, food consumption and nutrition and income inequality in Britain, spanning the period 1790-1960, in leading international journals. 

I was Principal Investigator on a £1.2m ESRC funded project Global Income Inequality, 1860-1960. This was a four-year project that commenced in February 2014 and was jointly co-ordinated from the departments of History and Economics at the University of Sussex. Our objective was to calculate new estimates of world inequality in the period from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s, based on evidence from household expenditure surveys. From 2010-2013 I was  Principal Investigator on a £1.1m ESRC funded project on Living Standards of Working Households in Britain, 1904-1960 . This project involved the extraction of data from the original returns of the Ministry of Labour 1953-4 Household Expenditure Survey and the creation of a web-based centre on British Living Standards, which is hosted at the Poverty Research Centre at Sussex. I have also been working on a project with Claire Langhamer (Sussex) on happiness and economic well-being in 1930s Britain, using data collected by Mass-Observation.

I did my first degree in Economics and Economic History at the University of Warwick and my D.Phil in Modern History at St Antony’s College, Oxford. I held a Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford before joining Sussex History Department in 1985. I was elected a Fellow of The Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. 

Select Publications

Recent Publications:

"The Poor and the Poorest, fifty years on: Evidence from British Household Expenditure Surveys of the 1950s and 1960s" (with Andrew Newell, Becca Searle, Kevin Reynolds and Hector Rufrancos, University of Sussex), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Volume 180, Issue 2, February 2017 (first published early-view April 2016) DOI: 10.1111/rssa.12202 on line: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rssa.12202/abstract,   

“ The transformation of hunger revisited: estimating available calories from the budgets of late 19th Century British households" (with Andrew Newell, University of Sussex), Journal of Economic History,  June 2015

  “Urban Working-Class Food Consumption and Nutrition in Britain in 1904,” (with Andrew Newell, University of Sussex ), Economic History Review,  2015 

 "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, (2014) and early on-line 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(2014), pp.151-180

"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, (2013) Vol 66, No .3 pp.757-784

 ‘The First World War and Working Class Food Consumption in Britain’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex). European Review of Economic History, (2013) 17, 1, 71-94

 ‘'The Meanings of Happiness in Mass Observation's Bolton' (with Claire Langhamer, Sussex). History Workshop Journal, Issue 75 (2013)

 ‘The End of Destitution’ (with Andrew Newell, 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, Sussex University) 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. 

 

Recent Discussion Papers 

"What Really Happened to British Inequality in the Early 20th Century? Evidence from National Household Expenditure Surveys 1890-1961" (with Andrew Newell, Kevin Reynolds and Hector Rufrancos). IZA discussion paper 11071 October 2017, DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.10842.64966.

" Escaping from Hunger before WW1: Nutrition and Living Standards in Western Europe and the USA in the Late Nineteeth Century" (with Andrew Newell, Rose Holmes,  Kevin Reynolds, Hector Rufrancos). IZA discussion paper 11037, September 2017 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17553.53601.

‘The Poor and the Poorest fifty years on: A re-examination of Abel-Smith and Townsend.’ (with Andrew Newell, Kevin Reynolds and Becca Searle, Sussex University). IZA discussion paper 7909 January 2014

 ‘The transformation of hunger revisited’, IZA Discussion Paper No 7275, (with Andrew Newell, Sussex University),  March 2013

 ‘Urban Working-Class Food Consumption and Nutrition in Britain in 1904,’  IZA Discussion Paper No. 6988, November 2012 (with Andrew Newell, Sussex University)

 ‘The Declines in Infant Mortality and Fertility: Evidence from British Cities in Demographic Transition"   IZA Discussion Paper No. 6855, (with Andrew Newell, Sussex University), 

 The First World War and Working Class Food Consumption in Britain’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex). IZA discussion paper  5297 November 2010

 ‘The End of Destitution’(with Andrew Newell, Sussex), IZA discussion Paper No. 4295, 2009

 ‘No Room to Live: Urban Overcrowding in Edwardian Britain’, (with Andrew Newell, Sussex), IZA discussion Paper No. 4209, 2009

 ‘Overcrowding in British cities in 1904’, (with Andrew Newell, Sussex), IZA discussion Paper No. 3199, 2007

 ‘British workmen's families consumption in 1904: a social survey rediscovered’ (with Andrew Newell, Sussex), IZA discussion Paper No. 3046, 2007