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Language

English (en)

Date of Award

4-25-2006

Author's School

College of Arts & Sciences

Author's Department

International and Area Studies

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (A.B.)

Restricted/Unrestricted

Restricted

Abstract

Historians have advanced seemingly conflicting theories to govern the working class wife's decision to find employment in l 900s Britain. One theory suggested that the basic determinant of whether a woman worked was the period in her life course-- single, married with children, married without children (e.g. Andrew August). However, an alternative theory suggested that the prime factor was economic crisis regardless of the period of the life (e.g. Elizabeth Roberts). Such a view suggests that only when a family is in dire financial straights does the woman work because social factors provide a strong disincentive. Based on my work using a computer simulation to generate synthetic time series data, these theories are not mutually exclusive. Working class women of 1900s Liverpool/Lancaster that were able to accumulate wealth even in the form of goods to pawn could be motivated by economic emergency and still yield work patterns consistent with the life stages theory. Investigating these two different theories is difficult without data on behaviors over time. To remedy this I created a simulation to generate synthetic time-series data for many synthetic families. This work will explore historical simulations as a means of studying the past. For reasons that one may only speculate on, it is a technique that is not widely applied by historians. My work focuses on using a specific type of computer modeling to investigate one specific issue: a dynamic micro-simulation of the family economy of the typical 1900s British working class family.

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