Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The main aims of the research project were to computerise all the surviving records of the New Survey of London Life and Labour (1929-31), and to begin economic analysis of the data obtained. The specific objectives were: 1. To input the data in a manner which would preserve virtually all the information presented on the cards, and to ensure that the machine readable records replicate that information as faithfully as possible. 2. To organise the data in the form of a relational database 3. To check the data against the original cards, to code some of the variables (e.g. labour market status), and to correct inconsistencies in the original records. 4. To undertake separate coding sub-projects for occupations, birthplaces and street quality. 5. To document the results obtained in the form of a codebook and a companion paper to explain the methods employed in the computerisation. An earlier project was carried out in the USA in 1983-1986, based on the same data, involved computerisation of a 10% sample of the original source, plus a 50% sample of the households containing at least one unemployed person. That study is available from ICPSR - see New Survey of London Life and Labor, 1929-1931. Apart from the fact that they are both based on the same data source, there is no other connection between the two projects. Main Topics:The New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL) survey was undertaken at the London School of Economics in 1929-31 to measure changes in living standards and in the scale and incidence of poverty among London's working class. It constitutes a unique source of microdata for economic and social history. One aim of the survey was to evaluate changes in working class living conditions since Charles Booth's pioneering survey of forty years earlier. The main component of the survey was a detailed household enquiry conducted mainly in the years 1929-31, during...