Memoranda presented to the Royal Commission.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Population.
Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoranda presented to the Royal Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/128 (page 21)
    the figures of Table XVIII. Thus, to say that the change in relative prices has contributed comparatively little to the improvement in the position of the family since 1938 is not the same thing as saying that a reversion to pre-war relative prices would not seriously worsen the position of the family. Since we do not know the post-war pattern of consumption, statistical enquiry can only attempt to answer the question as to the effect of the price changes in isolation in benefiting the family and not the alternative question as to the effect of their reversal(’). This procedure is appropriate, so long as it is not supposed to answer questions which it does not purport to answer. 67. On the basis of the Ministry of Labour Budget Enquiry of 1937-8, price indices have been calculated for various family sizes and income groups. These are shown in Table XIX: TABLE XIX Price Indices—March, 1948 (March 1939=100) ‘att Hens font Food only except Alcohol Rina and Tobacco and Tobacco Number of Children Ee scat Solel ae Total Expenditure per week in 1938: 40/- to 50/- : 157 | 160 | 158 | 155 | 156 | 159 | 171 | 170 | 169 60/— to 70/— Ss ee px WACO AIGI, E59 | 91ST 1-160 | 157 | VIS ETE 17S 90/— to 100/-__... a ... | 164 | 163 | 162 | 163 | 161 | 163 | 185 | 184 | 181 Annual Income of Head of House- hold in 1938: £250-£300 1% ie ae 164 167 174 £500-£700 Br et ae 166 173 178 Note: Working Class budgets from the Ministry of Labour Enquiry; Middle Class budgets from Philip Massey, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. CV, Part III, 1942, see para. 32. Price data have been obtained from Manchester and Liverpool Co-operative Societies and from Ministry of Labour figures. These indices somewhat underestimate the gain to the family with children. As can be seen from Table XVIII, the family with three children would derive considerably more benefit from the low prices of subsidised foodstuffs than would smaller families. Thus the price indices for families with three children would be one or two points below those for two children ; and those for larger families would probably be lower still. Even so, the contribution of price changes to the relative improvement of the position, as compared with 1938, of the family with several children is probably fairly slight. The reason is twofold; the government subsidies have been largely absorbed in offsetting the relative rise in world food prices and, in addition, although, in 1938, larger families did spend a larger proportion of their income on subsidised goods than very small families, yet the difference was not then very great. Government action has probably been more successful in helping the poorest families relatively to the better paid workers than it has been in helping the family with two or three children relatively to the childless. (‘) The distinction is that between the use of Laspeyre and Paasche indices of prices ; we are in the usual position that weights for the most recent period are not available.