Publication

This paper presents a price index covering the period 1750 to 2011 and illustrates the changing purchasing power of the pound over the long-term. The author argues that over the period as a whole, prices have increased 180-fold. Thus, he stresses that, for several reasons, such an exercise is very approximate: many products now commonly purchased simply did not exist in 1750 and, conversely, goods that consumed a large share of household budgets in the eighteenth century are now an insignificant part of most families’ expenditure. It is, however, possible to compare price levels over the long-term by linking price indices covering relatively short periods into a single series.