e.g. Rowntree, “Poverty: a Study of Town Life;” portions of Booth’s “Life and Labour of the People;” reports to the Board of Trade on the cost of living.
Webb, S. and B., “Industrial Democracy” (cheap edition), p. 674.
Marshall, “Principles of Economics,” vol. i. p. 159.
There is an assumption here which needs perhaps some discussion, i.e. that expenditure or consumption of goods can be most conveniently studied on the basis of family life. This is obviously the case with house-room, food, fuel, cleanliness, &c., less so with regard to clothes or recreation; it was truer of the past than of the present, and is truer of the poor than of the rich. In some classes, e.g. the professional class, where marriage is commonly delayed and a considerable period may intervene between the end of education and the establishment of a fresh household, it may be necessary to supplement the study of family expenditure by a consideration of the standard of living of unmarried men and women. Attempts, too, must be made to deal with the various forms of institutional life, varying from prisons and workhouses on the one hand to expensive boarding-schools and hotels on the other. But when all these necessary deductions have been made, it remains true that in order to study expenditure we must in the great majority of cases take the family as our basis of investigation. Consumption is organised on a family basis.
See Marshall, “Principles,” book ii. chap. ii.