The industrial revolution was a social, economic, and technological transformation that started in the United Kingdom in mid-18th-century and then expanded to Europe and North America. It shifted the world economy from an agricultural production focus to a manufacturer production economy, based on the scientific and technological advances of the modern era. This transformation brought several changes in the lives of working-class people and middle-class people.
First, throughout the 19th-century, a large number of workers moved from the country to urban centers, where they were employed in precarious conditions in different factories in order to produce textiles, engines, and other industrial goods. This large work-force was the basis of this economic transformation, and it was characterized by exploitation and low quality of life of thousands of working-class people.
Second, the rise of the middle-class can be traced to the bourgeois that was benefited with the liberal revolutions of the 18th-century in the UK. In the beginning, they were merchants and artisans, workshops owners that later became factories owners. They were the economic and political protagonists of the industrial revolution and were immensely benefited from this process.
Also, with the economic growth generated by industrialization and the pressure of workers organized in labor unions for better living conditions, the 20th-century saw an increase of the middle-class in capitalist countries. In general terms, due to welfare policies, many workers happened to enjoy better work and living conditions with access to better standards of health and education.
