Discuss.The standard of living of the working class is not only dependent on male real earnings, but also on unemployment, female and child real earnings, environmental conditions (working conditions, housing conditions, sanitary conditions) and institutional conditions (freedom, political rights, civil rights). Economic history has followed the path of development economics and tried to integrate these factors to get a more accurate picture of how living standards changed in the past. The discussion of how the standard of living for the working classes changed during the industrial revolution period from 1750 to 1850 has received new influence from work done by Floud using heights of army recruits during that period as indicator of health status and from work done by Lindert and Williamson (1983) giving new data for male nominal earnings, including rent in the cost of living index and adjusting for the weight of the different items in the index.