Using Rateable Value

For the historian the existence of a richly differentiated housing market potentially offers a valuable tool in the plotting of social status for large samples. Most quantitative research on social class uses aggregates of occupation. Yet at best this likely offers only a crude measure (consider the ambiguous label builder, or even solicitor, some of whom were very wealthy indeed, but most of whom were not). Little empirical evidence exists to support the claim that census groupings by occupation were homogeneous with regard to social standing (Savage et al, 1992; Brewer, 1986). Moreover, contemporaries disagreed as to what constituted hierarchy through occupation. The government census at the end of our period ranked professionals (by prestige) above those in business. Others saw professionals as part of a ‘service class’, below employers but on a par with managers and administrators in terms of authority, or, alternatively, placed higher professionals and company directors on an equal footing, and above managers and executives (General Register Office, 1956; Dahrendorf, 1959; . Hall and Caradog Jones, 1950).

The other indictor frequently used to place individuals hierarchically is probate (that is the wealth of an individual on death). Probate returns always undervalued the estates of women and industrialists. Moreover, they became increasingly unreliable indicators generally through the twentieth century as large scale tax avoidance took hold across the wealth range after death duty levels rose dramatically (from a top rate 15 per cent before 1914, to 40-50 per cent after 1918, and to 80 per cent after 1945) (Daunton, 2002; Horsman, 1975). Most people, too, owned too little for their ‘wealth’ to be captured by probate. Moreover, establishing a date of death for those not firmly in the public eye remains problematic.

By contrast, domestic rates as a property tax was universally levied, easily traced and can be readily attributed to individuals as householders. As such a rateable valuation enables us to place occupiers into the city’s social hierarchy. Indeed, if we so wish, we can use the valuation as an ordinal numeric index rather a monetary enumerator. Within this data set valuations have been standardised at 1934 rates: convenient because by then the rent controls originating 1914-18 that distorted markets had largely been relaxed. Yet, if we simply think of the value as an index, the date of standardisation is largely irrelevant. On this scale, only some 1.5 per cent of city households then lived in properties with rateable value of £51 p.a. or over. By contrast, 59 per cent of all houses within the city boundary were valued at £10 p.a. or less (Figure 1), and a further 15 percent in properties valued at £11 or £12 p.a. (values at or below this level commonly equating to working-class housing at the time). The rateable value of a house related directly to the value of the property, it being its gross estimated rental, less an allowance for maintenance, repairs and insurance. Valuations took into account physical appearance – that is this distinction of embellishment beyond cost - as well as the size of house and its area location (salubriousness, amenities) (Hicks et al, 1944).

Financially, expenditure on housing rentals or purchase was ‘highly income elastic’, varying directly at all levels of the income scale (Rubinstein, 1981). Nationally, total expenditure on housing at constant prices as a proportion of total consumer expenditure ran at stable levels from 1900 onwards (transwar periods excluded), rising from a little over eight per cent to nine per cent before the Great War, and settling at slightly over ten per cent in the1920s and 1930s. Allowing for adjustments for qualitative improvements in housing standards, in all but the short term a constant and self-correcting ratio existed between average house prices and average earnings (Bowley, 1937; Feinstein, 1972; Holmans, 1990).

Levels of spending reflected life-style choices and occupational couplings. For the status driven middle-classes, say in the mid-1920s, housing expenditure typically accounted for a not inconsiderable 12½-17½ per cent of family consumption (Caradog Jones, 1927). The lower-middle class spent proportionately more of its income on housing – its principal symbol of respectability - than did those above or below, as it sought actively to differentiate itself from blue-collar workers. That home owners within the same income range spent a slightly larger proportion on their home than did renters should also be viewed as aspirant consumption, and as a physical investment in maintaining and improving their property and status.

Table 1: Rateable Value against Class Nottingham, 1900-50 (1934 constant prices)

	Upper-Middle Class	Middle-Middle Class	Lower-Middle Class	Skilled Working Class
Mean	£103	£48	£19	£11
Std Dev	£37.2	£14.9	£5.9	£4.1
Highest Decile	£147	£68	£26	£16
Upper Quartile	£117	£60	£22	£12
Median	£97	£48	£20	£10
Lower Quartile	£80	£36	£15	£9
Lower Decile	£68	£30	£12	£8

Table 1 offers a tabular representation of the relationship between class and housing in Nottingham, setting tentative boundaries between housing value and class membership. Thus for the upper-middle classes, who constituted say one per cent of the city’s population, occupied at the lower end properties valued at around the £70-80 pa mark, or roughly a large detached villa in the city’s exclusive Park enclave.

The upper limit of lower-middle class housing occupation would similarly stand at around the £26-£28 pa mark, a small detached inter-war house, or more likely joining the ranks renting or owning a modest semi-detached Victorian villa or as likely mock-Tudor inter-war semi that increasingly surrounded British cities. Only in the upper/lower reaches of the class divides between skilled workers and the lower middle class do we see overlap and blur. That this occurs is not really surprising, reflecting as it did, the relative earning capacity of each group at its perimeters.

go to top