Here’s the text with all numbers and names replaced with dramatic censor blocks:

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…had the option to let disappear, and the history might be generally interesting for everyone.

So hello everyone.

This is actually addressed to [██████████].

I was thinking again about the example of single-income households from the golden years of the '[████]s. I recently watched a historical drama with [██████████], and in it the men had no work because women and children were cheaper laborers.

There’s also that rural schoolhouse from [████] in an open-air museum that has to fit into this story somewhere too.

So I started doing some research into numbers. I really spent a lot of time on this, typing it all out, so hopefully you’ll find it interesting enough to actually read.

Labor and the economy: a historical overview from before the modern state to now.

Before [████], almost everyone worked, especially in rural areas. “Work” wasn’t really a defined concept like it is now — a household provided for its income together. School was something for the elite.

At the same time, among the elite there was already a phenomenon where men wrote about the dangers of the “feminization” of men (so-called “[████████]”) and women who behaved too much like men and did men’s work. There was even talk back then of a “[████████████]” theory (I’d already come across this in a documentary — an interesting sidenote).

Over the course of the [████]s–[████]s, school attendance rose enormously. In [████], [████]% of boys and [████]% of girls attended school, though still often combined with farm work.

Also on the rise was the industrial revolution — machines reduced the need for labor on the land, so men sought work in cities, and once they found it, the family moved too.

A man’s wage was rarely enough on its own, though, so women and children also worked to supplement the household income.

Between [████]–[████] — the period the historical drama was set in — you get an extreme situation. Men found less work because women and children were cheaper; in many families in that industrial town, the wife and child were the breadwinners while the husband was unemployed.

In that period, about [████]% of women were working ([████████████████████████████████]).

A lot changed with the introduction of universal suffrage (for men); serious child labor laws followed (there had already been a ban on labor under age [██], but it wasn’t enforced), and in [████] compulsory schooling was introduced.

Among the elite there was still plenty of uproar about “masculinized” women and vice versa. Wealthy women started riding bicycles and sometimes wore trousers to do so — a complete scandal.

It’s really only in the [████]s that you get the textbook image of the man as breadwinner and the woman at the hearth. But this didn’t happen organically — it was enforced through a marriage ban.

The church, which still controlled the schools, demanded through this ban that women stop working in education once they married. This remained in effect until [████].

Similar laws existed for government jobs until [████] (I found this for a neighboring country, but couldn’t find a source for it locally).

During this era there were [██] world wars in which many men died, which caused demand for and wages of men to rise enormously.

And so we arrive in the [████]s–[████]s, in an economic situation where the man as sole breadwinner earned enough for a house, garden, and car. These were the golden years for men, but also for women — the marriage bans were abolished and women gained the right to vote. The “[████] feminist wave” took place, with women taking to the streets to protest their much lower wages. [████]% of women (ages [██] to [██]) were working — figures for women under [██] apparently don’t exist for that period, which I don’t understand. But generally, things were improving.

In the [████]s came the oil crisis and structural problems in aging heavy industries. But wages and purchasing power kept rising thanks to wage indexing; unemployment also rose, but mainly in the heavy-industry regions.

In the [████]s, everything crashed hard — not because of women, but because of the economy. Inflation was enormous, and the government under [██████████] at the time froze wage indexation and devalued the currency by [███]%; if I’ve got that right, everyone lost almost [███]% of their purchasing power overnight. If I’m counting correctly, you were [██] at the time — maybe you heard your grandparents talk about it.

Throughout the '[████]s, the “index jump” was applied multiple times, each time cutting [██]%, under the [██████████ █] government (I estimate they took away about [██]% of purchasing power in total — absolute bastards, and they got re-elected?).

In this decade, women’s labor participation also returned to [████]% — the same number as exactly [███] years earlier. For men it was around [████]%, and that’s remained roughly stable up to today.

Productivity rose enormously starting in [████] (long live the computer?) but wages didn’t rise proportionally.

We’re nearly at the present now, so the summary moves a bit faster.

In [████] came the currency changeover — I remember it myself. I don’t need to tell you what that did to purchasing power.

By now, [████]% of women are working — I thought it would be higher.

A few once-in-a-lifetime events and a peak of nearly [██]% inflation around ‘[██]’. The housing market exploded and more than doubled in price.

Rents rose along with it. Anyone who already owned property became [██] times as wealthy over [██] years compared to those who didn’t. But their purchasing power didn’t increase — it fell with inflation. Richer and poorer at the same time.

Rent prices rose along with that “normal” inflation. [██] times as poor.

After ‘[██]’, inflation saw many more economic crises, such as in [████] with a war breaking out in a neighboring region, followed by an energy crisis.

Cumulative inflation is apparently hard to calculate, since it’s always an average. But with [███]% a year, you end up with an [██]% increase in prices overall (inflation calculator).

Everything is roughly [██] times as expensive; people are roughly [██] times as poor.

Since a well-known war broke out between [██████████] in [████], again bringing an energy crisis, inflation this time is estimated at a [██]% increase.

By now, just under [██]% of women are working. From ~[██]% in [████], that’s [██]% growth in +[██] years. I don’t know if that still has anything to do with this story. But I think I’ve answered it with that.