Valuing five centuries of unpaid breastfeeding in England

20 October 2026

A new article by Professor Jane Humphries and Louis Henderson has recently been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Henderson and Humphries produce the first estimates of the economic contribution of unpaid breastfeeding spanning five centuries of English history and integrating historical and bioarchaeological data; the value of maternal nursing relative to national income fell from a peak of 6.58% in 1540 as incomes increased, reversed in the late nineteenth century when mean breastfeeding duration rose, and fell again over the twentieth century, constituting a dynamic and significant human capital investment at times greater than expenditure on school and apprenticeship fees. 

PNAS is one of the world's most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), is an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans the biological, physical, and social sciences. The journal is global in scope and submission is open to all researchers worldwide.