Hostname: page-component-669899f699-7xsfk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T03:14:52.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HAZEL KYRK AND THE RISE OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN INTERWAR AMERICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2024

Manfredi Alberti  and
Pier Francesco Asso
Manfredi Alberti*
Affiliation:
Manfredi Alberti and Pier Francesco Asso: University of Palermo, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations.
Pier Francesco Asso*
Affiliation:
Manfredi Alberti and Pier Francesco Asso: University of Palermo, Department of Political Sciences and International Relations.
*
Email: [email protected]; [email protected].
Email: [email protected]; [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent studies have revalued Hazel Kyrk for her original works on consumption and the critique of neoclassical demand theory. Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923) opened up new perspectives for understanding the nature of consumption and revalued home economics as a central part of the economist agenda, taking distance from the first generation of home economists. This paper focuses on Kyrk’s post-1923 scientific production and professional activities. Our main purpose is to show her contributions to the quantitative foundations of consumption together with her attempt to feed contemporary research on consumers’ behavior with pragmatism, policy advice, and field knowledge. We selected specific issues: the education of consumers through information and a strategy of “critical consumption”; the analysis of strategic industries; the well-being of American families; and the importance of “invisible” objects (non-market activities) and their statistical processing.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , First View , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of History of Economics Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

The paper was presented at the Paris workshop on Hazel Kyrk (May 30, 2023) organized by Rebeca Gomez Betancourt and David Philippy, and at the Aispe-Sise Conference (Palermo, October 19–21, 2023). We wish to thank Giandomenica Becchio, Juliette Blayac, Rebeca Gomez Betancourt, David Philippy, Cléo Chassonery-Zaïgouche, all participants in the two sessions, and two anonymous referees for their useful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

REFERENCES

Abbott, Edith, and Breckinridge, Sophonisba P.. 1906. “Employment of Women in Industries: Twelfth Census Statistics.” Journal of Political Economy 14 (1): 14–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Margo J. 2015. The American Census: A Social History. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E., and Cherrier, Béatrice. 2017. “The Age of the Applied Economist.” History of Political Economy 49 (Suppl.): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bankovsky, Miriam. 2024. “What Should Families Want? From Hazel Kyrk to Margaret Reid and Beyond.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (41D): 95–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateman, Victoria. 2019. The Sex Factor. How Women Made the West Rich. Medford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Becchio, Giandomenica. 2019. A History of Feminist and Gender Economics. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beller, Andrea H., and Kiss, Elizabeth D.. 1999. On the Contribution of Hazel Kyrk to Family Economics. West Lafayetter: Department of Consumer Sciences and Retailing, Purdue University.Google Scholar
Blayac, Juliette. 2023. “Jessica Peixotto, a Home Economist Not Thrilled by the Thrift Culture.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 30(6): 1150–1169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boserup, Ester. 1970. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Brady, Dorothy S., and Friedman, Rose D.. 1947. “Savings and the Income Distribution.” In Studies in Income and Wealth. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, pp. 247–265.Google Scholar
Breckinridge, Sophonisba Preston. 1933. “The Activities of Women Outside the Home.” In Recent Social Trends in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, pp. 709–750.Google Scholar
Coyle, Diane. 2014. GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Desrosières, Alain. 1998. The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Didier, Emmanuel. 2009. En quoi consiste l’Amérique? Les statistiques, le New Deal et la démocratie. Paris: La Découverte.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, Paul H. 1934. The Theory of Wages. New York: Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Douglas, Paul H., and Schoenberg, Erika H.. 1937. “Studies in the Supply Curve of Labor: The Relation in 1929 between Average Earnings in American Cities and the Proportions Seeking Employment.” Journal of Political Economy 45 (1): 45–79.Google Scholar
Field, Jerry J. 1991. “A History of Educational Radio in Chicago with Emphasis on WBEZ-FM, 1920–1960.” PhD diss., 2273, Loyola University, Chicago.Google Scholar
Fleurbaey, Marc, and Blanchet, Didier. 2013. Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folbre, Nancy. 1991. “The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Economic Thought.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16 (3): 463–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folbre, Nancy. 1998. “The Sphere of Women in Early Twentieth Century Economics.” In Silverberg, Helene, ed., Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 35–60.Google Scholar
Forget, Evelyn L. 2011. “American Women and the Economics Profession in the Twentieth Century.” Œconomia. History, Methodology, Philosophy 1 (1): 19–30.Google Scholar
Forget, Evelyn L. 2023. “Retrospectives: Margaret Reid, Chicago, and Permanent Income.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 37 (4): 251–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilboy, Elizabeth W. 1934. Wages in Eighteenth Century England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gilboy, Elizabeth W. 1938. “The Propensity to Consume.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 53 (1): 120–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glickman, Lawrence B. 1997. A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Glickman, Lawrence B. 2001. “The Strike in the Temple of Consumption: Consumer Activism and Twentieth-Century American Political Culture.” Journal of American History 88 (1): 99–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glickman, Lawrence B. 2009. Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. 2006. “The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family.” American Economic Review 96 (2): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Carolyn M. 1997. “Part of the Package: Home Economists in the Consumer Products Industries, 1920–1940.” In Stage, Sarah and Vincenti, Virginia B., eds., Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, pp. 271–296.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Carolyn M. 2012. Creating Consumers. Home Economists in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Henderson, Yandell, and Davie, Maurice R., eds. 1929. Incomes and Living Costs of a University Faculty. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Emilie J. 1929. “The Economic Problems of Women.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 143 (5): 132–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Marianne. 2023. “Kyrk’s Students: Measuring the Distribution of Income and Taxes.” Working paper prepared for the workshop “100 Years After the Publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923) by Hazel Kyrk.” Paris, Cergy University, May 30, 2023.Google Scholar
Kneeland, Hildegarde. 1929a. “Is the Modern Housewife a Lady of Leisure?” Survey-Graphic Magazine 52 (1): 301–306.Google Scholar
Kneeland, Hildegarde. 1929b. “Woman’s Economic Contribution in the Home.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 143 (5): 33–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuiper, Edith. 2022. A Herstory of Economics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Kuiper, Edith. 2024. “Hazel Kyrk, Eugenics, and Consumption Standards.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (41D): 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1923. Theory of Consumption. New York and Boston: Houghton Miffin.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1929. “The Economics of Consumption as a Field for Research in Agricultural Economics: Discussion.” Journal of Farm Economics 11 (4): 573–577.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. [1929] 1933. Economic Problems of the Family. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1930. “Education and Rational Consumption.” Journal of Educational Sociology 4 (1): 14–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1933. “The Selection of Problems for Home Economics Research.” Journal of Home Economics 25: 680–686.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1934a. The Consumer and the Marketing System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1934b. “Wastes in the Consumer’s Dollar.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 173 (5): 18–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1935a. “Who Shall Educate the Consumer.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 182 (11): 41–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1935b. “The Government and the Consumer.” Journal of Home Economics 27 (4): 201–206.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1937. “Methods of Measuring Variations in Family Expenditures: Discussion.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 197 (3): 47–49.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1944. “Consumer Education for Nonspecialized Students: Its Relation to Economic Education.” School Review 52 (9): 543–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1947. “Who Works and Why.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 251 (1): 44–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1948. Managing Home and Job: Family Responsibilities of Earning Women. Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel. 1950. “The Income Distribution as a Measure of Economic Welfare.” American Economic Review 40 (2): 342–355.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel, and Davis, Joseph Stancliffe. 1925. The American Baking Industry, 1849–1923. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kyrk, Hazel, Monroe, Day, Cronister, Kathryn, and Perry, Margaret. 1941. Consumer Purchases Study. Family Expenditures for Housing and Household Operation. Five Regions. Washington, DC: The Bureau of Home Economics in Cooperation with the Work Projects Administration.Google Scholar
Le Tollec, Agnès. 2020. “Finding a New Home (Economics): Toward a Science of the Rational Family, 1924–1981.” PhD diss., Université Paris-Saclay, Paris.Google Scholar
Lepenies, Philipp. [2013] 2016. The Power of a Single Number: A Political History of GDP. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Leven, Maurice, Moult, Harold G., and Warburton, Clark. 1934. America’s Capacity to Consume. Washington: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Lough, William H. 1935. High-Level Consumption: Its Behavior; Its Consequences. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
McMahon, Theresa S. 1925. Social and Economic Standards of Living. Boston, New York: D. C. Heat.Google Scholar
May, Ann M. 2022. Gender and the Dismal Science. Women in the Early Years of the Economics Profession. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meagher, Gabrielle. 1997. “Recreating Domestic Service: Institutional Cultures and the Evolution of Paid Household Work.” Feminist Economics 3 (2): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1912. “The Backward Art of Spending Money.” American Economic Review 2 (2): 269–281.Google Scholar
Monroe, Day. 1937. “Analyzing Families by Composition Type with Respect to Consumption.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 32 (197): 35–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monroe, Day, Kyrk, Hazel, and Stone, Ursula B.. [1925] 1938. Food Buying and Our Markets. New York: M. Barrows and Company.Google Scholar
Morgan, Mary S., and Rutherford, Malcom, eds. 1998. From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism. HOPE 30 (Suppl.). Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
O’Brien, Ellen. 1994. “How the ‘G’ Got into the GNP.” In Vaughn, Karen I., ed., Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought. Vol. 10, Method, Competition, Conflict and Measurement in the Twentieth Century. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 241–255.Google Scholar
Ogburn, William F. 1919. “Measurement of the Cost of Living and Wages.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 81 (1): 110–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogburn, William F. 1923. “The Standard of Living Factor in Wages.” American Economic Review 13 (1): 118–128.Google Scholar
Peixotto, Jessica. B. 1927a. Getting and Spending at the Professional Standard of Living: A Study of the Costs of Living an Academic Life. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Peixotto, Jessica. B. 1927b. “Family Budgets.” American Economic Review 17 (1): 132–140.Google Scholar
Philippy, David. 2021. “Ellen Richards’s Home Economics Movement and the Birth of the Economics of Consumption.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 43 (3): 378–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philippy, David, Betancourt, Rebeca Gomez, and Dimand, Robert W.. 2024. “Hazel Kyrk’s Intellectual Roots: When First-Generation Home Economists Met the Institutionalist Framework.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (41D): 7–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Margaret. 1972. “Miss Hazel Kyrk.” In Dye, Marie, ed., History of the Department of Home Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Alumni Association. Typescript in the Archives of the Michigan State University Library.Google Scholar
Richards, Ellen H. S. 1899. The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Rossiter, Margaret. 1982. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutherford, Malcom. 2011. The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918–1947. Science and Social Control. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skotnicki, Tad. 2021. The Sympathetic Consumer: Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spring, Joel. 2003. Educating the Consumer-citizen. A History of the Marriage of Schools, Advertising, and Media. Mahwah-London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stapleford, Thomas A. 2007. “Market Visions: Expenditure Surveys, Market Research, and Economic Planning in the New Deal.” Journal of American History 94 (2): 418–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stapleford, Thomas A. 2009. The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stigler, George. J. 1954. “The Early History of Empirical Studies of Consumer Behaviour.” Journal of Political Economy 62 (2): 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph, Sen, Amartya, and Fitoussi, Jean-Paul. 2010. Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up. London: New Press.Google Scholar
Sydenstricker, Edgar, and King, Wilford I.. 1920. “A Method of Classifying Families According to Incomes in Studies of Disease Prevalence.” Public Health Reports 35 (48): 2829–2846.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todorova, Zdravka. 2024. “Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption, Veblen’s Business and Industrial Concerns, and W.C. Mitchell’s Essays on Spending and Money: Conceptual Links.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (41D): 27–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trezzini, Attilio. 2016. “Early Contributions to the Economics of Consumption as a Social Phenomenon.” European Journal of History of Economic Thought 23 (2): 272–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trezzini, Attilio. 2024. “Hazel Kyrk, the Economics of the Social Relevance of Consumption and John Maynard Keynes’ Consumption Function.” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology (41D): 69–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
US Bureau of the Census. 1943. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Occupation, Industry, Employment and Income. Population. The Labor Force. Volume III. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
van Velzen, Susan. 2001. Supplements to the Economics of Household Behavior. Amsterdam: Research Series, Universiteit van Amsterdam.Google Scholar
van Velzen, Susan. 2003. “Hazel Kyrk and the Ethics of Consumption.” In Barker, D. K. and Kuiper, E., eds., Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics. New York: Routledge, pp. 38–55.Google Scholar
Williams, Faith M., and Zimmerman, Carle C.. 1935. Studies of Families Living in the United States and Other Countries: An Analysis of Material and Method. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Carle C. 1927. “Objectives and Methods in Rural Living Studies.” Journal of Farm Economics 9 (2): 223–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar