It has been seen that according to the figures compiled by us, 57.1s. out of every 100s. is spent on food in Irish wage-earning class households; 17.5s. on clothing, and so on, and it is of interest to compare these "weights" with the corresponding figures calculated by the English Ministry of Labour from the "United Kingdom" Budgets of 1904, which relate to the pre-war "United Kingdom" Standard of Living and which are still in use in England.
The following table shows the proportion of each 100s. spent by Wage-Earning Class Households which is spent on (1) Food, (2) Clothing, (3) Rent, (4) Fuel and Light, and (5) Sundries:--
----------------------------------------------+----------------------- | IN IRELAND. | IN "UNITED KINGDOM." +--------------------------+----------------------- | In June, |In July, 1914| |In July, Class of | 1922, as |as calculated| In July, |1922, as Commodity. | calculated |from the | 1914, as |calculated | from the |previous |calculated |from 1904 | Committee's|column by | from 1904 |Budgets by | Budgets. |price | Budgets. |price | |changes. | |changes. -------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+----------- | A. | B. | C. | D. (1) Food | 57·1 | 56·2 | 60 | 58·6 (2) Clothing | 17·5 | 17·0 | 12 | 15·6 (3) Rent | 5·4 | 7·9 | 16 | 13·3 (4) Fuel and | | | | Light | 7·0 | 6·6 | 8 | 8·3 (5) Sundries | 13·0 | 12·3 | 4 | 4·2 +------------+-------------+-----------+----------- Total | 100·0 | 100·0 | 100 | 100·0 -------------------+------------+-------------+-----------+-----------
It should be explained that the method of arriving at Columns B and D is as follows:--
The amounts of the various commodities consumed, as shown in the table compiled from the budgets, are left unchanged, but the prices are altered according to the prices ruling at the date under consideration, _i.e._, Column B shows the proportion of expenditure in 1914 on the various classes of commodities had the 1914 standard been precisely the same as the present day standard.
We were now in possession of the retail prices of the individual commodities at the different dates, and of the weights obtained from the summarisation of the household budgets, and these prices and weights for the main groups of articles are set out in the subjoined table:--