The Dangerous Economist: The price of light has fallen dramatically since 1800

Thursday, October 08, 2026

The price of light has fallen dramatically since 1800

See Why the rich burn money by Matt Ridley. Excerpt:

"In the trailer I just watched for the new film of Sense and Sensibility, there is a brief glimpse of a ballroom lit by at least 50 candles in shot, probably more out of shot. This implies that the Dashwood family was a lot wealthier than Jane Austen’s plot says. Tallow candles were almost absurdly expensive in those days—way beyond the reach of the poor; an extravagance even for those of middle income.
Roger Fouquet and Peter Pearson calculated in 2006 that the price of all artificial light was once exorbitant. Today roughly a fifth of a second of work on the average wage will buy you an hour of light from a normal LED bulb in a bedside lamp.
In 1800, on the then-average wage, you would have to work six hours to get the same quantity of light from a bunch of tallow candles—let alone a whole ballroom’s worth of light. The deflation in the price of light has been epic.
In short, light was once a luxury, and is now a quotidian necessity.
If, in the future, the world becomes a more prosperous place for everybody, that will happen to many more things. Will nothing then be a luxury good?
Think of the things that were out of reach for all but the wealthiest when I was a child but are now commonplace necessities: air travel, private cars, avocados. Or the things that were once the unimaginable preserve of only the richest people in past centuries: music on demand, cotton underwear, ice cream, chicken."

Also see The cost of lighting has decreased by over 1000x.