Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Cost of Living. By E. Sjöstrand
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v. social movements.
Cost of Living.
On every period of industrial and commercial prosperity complaint at
the increase of the cost of living generally follows. For economic
prosperity means rising prices of goods, which certainly lead to larger net profits
than usual in business, provide possibilities of extending the output, and
allow of the starting of new departments of manufacture, etc. But at
the same time rising prices diminish the purchasing power of money, and
consequently lower the conditions of life for persons whose income is fixed.
The great changes caused in the value of money since very early days, by
the variations in the production of the valuable metals, have also sensibly
deranged the conditions of life for the masses. Thus it is known that the
unusual rise in prices which followed the discovery of gold and silver in
America had a most unfavourable influence upon the standard of living
among wage-earners.
It was not till our own time, however, that these phenomena received
more careful attention. A knowledge as exact and profound as possible
concerning the cost of living and its changes, can be obtained from a
regular and uninterrupted series of statistics on prices for the necessaries
of life, dwellings, etc., as well as from information upon the size and
composition of the housekeeper’s budget for various incomes. Whereas the
first-named set of figures is intended to give the average prices for different
sorts of those wares that are found in the household budget, an
investigation of the latter kind provides an opportunity of learning how the
household expenses are distributed among the various entries in the budget and
of estimating the quantities of the various foddstuffs, etc. consumed.
Whereas official statistics of prices which are drawn up in most civilized
countries generally consist of continuous reports (by the week or the
month) on prices in a considerable number of places, enquiries into the
budget, on the other hand (on account of the expense and trouble entailed),
can only be undertaken at considerable intervals and to a limited extent.
By means of extending such an enquiry to include a number of households,
certain average returns can, nevertheless, be secured, and by their aid
representative normal budgets may be drawn up for different groups of
the population, and these, likewise, may be taken as being correct for a
succession of years. A budget enquiry thus provides, among other things,
information as to the normal quantities of different commodities consumed
in a household of a particular type. By a simple multiplication of the
quantities so obtained, by the figures taken from the continuous statistics
of prices, a measure of the real importance for the cost of living of the
variations in prices is obtained.
A Swedish budget enquiry comprising earlier times has been prepared by
docent E. Sommarin, who has also endeavoured to ascertain the result of changing
prices on the budgets of various times. This enquiry is limited to the economic
position of miners and farmlabourers in Sweden from the 14th century till
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