From the passage of Gilbert's Act in 1782 to the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834, real per capita relief expenditures increased at a rate of nearly 1% per annum. Several explanations have been offered for the rapid increase in expenditures: the disincentive effects of generous relief benefits, laborers' loss of land through enclosures and engrossment, the decline of employment opportunities for women and children in cottage industry, a reduction in wage rates for agricultural laborers.

To date, however, none of these explanations has been tested empirically. In view of the general paucity of time-series data, this is perhaps not surprising. But there is a gold mine of cross-sectional parish-level information concerning the administration of poor relief, and agricultural labor markets in general, that to this date has been underutilized. I refer to the Rural Queries, the questionnaire mailed to rural parishes throughout England in 1832 by the Royal Poor Law Commission, and answered by approximately 1,100 parishes. Throughout this period, the level of per capita relief expenditures differed significantly across counties, and across parishes within counties. Presumably, the same explanations given for the long-term increase in relief expenditures can be used to account for cross-parish variations in expenditures. By combining information from the Rural Queries with occupational data from the 1831 census, it is possible to test most of the hypotheses that have been put forth to explain variations in relief expenditures across parishes.