I investigate how the relationship between the wage and the length of the work day has changed since the 1890s among prime‐aged men and women. I find that across wage deciles, within wage deciles, and within industry and occupation groups, the most highly paid worked fewer hours than the lowest paid in the 1890s but that by 1973 differences in hours worked were small and by 1991 the highest paid worked the longest day. I examine several explanations for the compression in the length of the work day and investigate the implications of hours inequality for earnings inequality.

Dora L. Costa of University of California, Los Angeles reviews, “Explaining Long-Term Trends in Health and Longevity” by Robert W. Fogel. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the theory and measurement of aging- and health-related variables and considers how the anthropometric approach to historical analysis has helped reinterpret the nature of economic growth. Discusses secular changes in American and British stature and nutrition; second thoughts on the European escape from hunger—famines, chronic malnutrition, and mortality rates; trends in physiological capital—implications for equity in health care; changes in disparities and chronic diseases through the course of the twentieth century; and some common problems in analysis and measurement. Fogel is Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions in the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.”

This paper provides the first estimates of overall CPI bias prior to the 1970s and new estimates of bias since the 1970s. It finds that annual CPI bias was −0.1 percent between 1888 and 1919 and rose to 0.7 percent between 1919 and 1935. Annual CPI bias was 0.4 percent in the 1960s and then rose to 2.7 percent between 1972 and 1982 before falling to 0.6 percent between 1982 and 1994. The findings imply that we have underestimated growth rates in true income in the 1920s and 1930s and in the 1970s.

I investigate the factors that fostered the rise in separate living quarters for the aged prior to Social Security by estimating the income effect of the first major pension program in the United States, that covering Union Army veterans. I find that income substantially increased demand for separate living arrangements, suggesting that prior to 1940 rising incomes were the most important factor enabling the elderly to live alone. Comparisons with recent studies imply that income no longer plays as large a role, perhaps because income levels are now higher and independent living is both less expensive and more attractive.

In the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, large cities had extremely high death rates from infectious disease. Within major cities such as New York City and Philadelphia, there was significant variation at any point in time in the mortality rate across neighborhoods. Between 1900 and 1930 neighborhood mortality convergence took place in New York City and Philadelphia. We document these trends and discuss their consequences for neighborhood quality of life dynamics and the economic incidence of who gains from effective public health interventions.

We find that households living in California homes built in the 1960s and 1970s had high electricity consumption in 2000 relative to houses of more recent vintages because the price of electricity at the time of home construction was low. Homes built in the early 1990s had lower electricity consumption than homes of earlier vintages because the price of electricity was higher. The elasticity of the price of electricity at the time of construction was -0.22. As homes built between 1960 and 1989 become a smaller share of the housing stock, average household electricity purchases will fall.

Twenty-seven percent of the Union Army prisoners captured July 1863 or later died in captivity. At Andersonville, the death rate may have been as high as 40 percent. How did men survive such horrific conditions? Using two independent datasets, we find that friends had a statistically significant positive effect on survival probabilities and that the closer the ties between friends as measured by such identifiers as ethnicity, kinship, and the same hometown, the bigger was the impact of friends on survival probabilities.

Nonmarket goods such as unpaid household labor, leisure, health and longevity, and the environment are important components of the standard of living. They represent a large fraction of all activities. Prime-aged men and women spend 17 percent of their day in leisure activities, and 5 and 13 percent of their time, respectively, in unpaid housework compared to 23 and 13 percent of their time, respectively, in paid work. The quantity of nonmarket goods is rising over time. In the United States, life expectancy at birth is now 77 years, having risen by 29 years since 1900. In Los Angeles County between 1980 and 1998, average annual daily exceedences of the national smog standard declined by 60 days from 71 to 11. Falling big-city murder rates merit national news headlines. Studies of living standards have focused on the tremendous change in the quantity of nonmarket goods but have assumed that the value of nonmarket goods, except for unpaid labor, has remained constant. This assumption underlies most health studies (e.g., David Cutler and Elizabeth Richardson, 1997; Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel, 2003; William T. Nordhaus, 2003). Nordhaus (2003) valued declines in mortality since 1900 using a constant value of life. Even the Boskin CPI Commission (Michael J. Boskin et al., 1998) discussed trends in the quantity of nonmarket goods (i.e., pollution and crime progress) without mentioning incorporating such goods’ implicit prices into a broader CPI measure. There is no reason to think that implicit prices or the willingness to pay for nonmarket goods has remained constant. Rising real and shadow wages have made both leisure and unpaid household labor more expensive. Rising incomes have also made such normal goods as safety, health, a temperate climate, and the environment more valuable. We document the price dynamics of nonmarket goods by estimating repeat cross-sectional hedonic regressions. We focus on two important and measurable nonmarket goods: job fatality risk and climate. In both cases we find that both price and quantity have been rising. This evidence is consistent with rising valuation. We use our estimates of job-risk compensating differentials to construct new evidence on long-run trends in value of life. Accounting for price changes affects how we view the retrospective and prospective benefits of medical innovations. A rising value of life implies that marginal improvements in safety and in longevity are becoming more valuable. We report evidence that the price of living in a temperate winter and summer climate has significantly increased over time.