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Industrial Revolution Metrics

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While popular belief is that the British Industrial Revolution laid the foundation for the modern economy and was perhaps the most prosperous time in history, an analysis and further combination of data on human heights, urban populations, morality rates and disease popularity during that time provide a different picture that supports a more pessimistic view of the Industrial Revolution. When attempting to understand the forces of change operating in an economy, it is important to looks at the four metrics mentioned above (height, crowding, morality and disease) because they are all crucial functions of the real standard of living equation. First, Deborah Oxley examines the role of all four metrics in her article titled, ‘The seat of death and terror’: urbanization, stunting and smallpox. She focuses on the relationship between height and disease (smallpox) but as a result of her analysis, she draws conclusions on the effects of urban crowding and provides data on mortality rates as well. To start, Professor Oxley illustrates how important height is in the standard of living debate. After she provides a long list of standard of living metrics (i.e. the level and quality of nutrition, the …show more content…

The Industrial Revolution is commonly seen as a time of great prosperity where many people became very wealthy very quickly. However, income is not the only way to measure prosperity. When looking at how other factors changed throughout the revolution it can be seen that in fact, people in cities were worse off than they were before. While they might have had more money during the revolution, their standard of living had decreased which renders the money worthless since they aren't healthy enough to spend it. The Industrial Revolution led to great advances that made society far better off, but during the actual revolution as with most change, there was

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