Jane Humphries

Housework, hygiene and health. Public expectations versus private limitations in working-class households in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth–century Britain

Economic historians often attribute better health and hygiene in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to improved domestic conditions, enabled by sanitary reform and the education of working-class women in household management. Instruction might have engendered a new...

Valuing five centuries of unpaid breastfeeding in England

Breastfeeding is vital and valuable labor, contributing to the physical and cognitive health of children throughout their lives, yet it is rarely compensated in formal labor markets. Its economic importance may therefore go unrecognized. We impute upper and lower bounds for the v...