The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social StructureJudy Stephenson
The concept of an ‘industrious revolution’—a period when household productivity and consumer demand increased before industrialization, generating surplus for investment in new technology—has been influential since the late 1990s. For economic historians, the measure of industriousness is the number of days people worked per year. For anybody who was paid by the day, annual income was a function of the portion of the day rate that they received, and the number of days that they received it for. How many days people worked per year is therefore of profound importance to understanding preindustrial living standards, as well as economic growth.