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Development Indicators and the Historical Study of Human Welfare: Towards a New Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Othick
John Othick
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland
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Abstract

Empirical evidence from the Third World on the impact of early industrialization on welfare has produced new ideas on relations between growth, distribution, and the quality of life. Historical welfare must also be reassessed with less emphasis on material living standards. Distribution should be more systematically analyzed, and quality of life indicators considered. By adopting the approach, historians will revitalize old debates and make these more relevant to issues in modern development studies. Historians also need to investigate welfare themes in recent and comparative history to a greater extent than hitherto, which requires closer integration between economic, social, and political history.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 63 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1983

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