U.K. households spent $275 a week in 1981

Press, 10 January 1983, Page 16

U.K. households spent $275 a week in 1981

NZPA London The average British household spent £125.4 ($NZ275.88) a week in 1981, according to a recently published family expenditure survey.

With the average household sizd in 1981 being 2.73 persons, this amounted to each person spending £46 (SNZIOI.2O). But the survey showed that larger families were cheaper. Households which showed the lowest relative spending per person were those with two adults and four or more children. Their spending each week was just over half the average weekly expenditure of all households.

Pensioners spent less than the average per week, with low income one-person pensioner households (which derive three-quarters or more of their total income from state pensions and benefits) spending _ £36.3 ($NZ79.86)

per week on average, and two-person pensioner households £58.5 (?NZ128.70). The survey also showed up the increase in unemployment when compared with the results of the 1980 survey. Then, 6 per cent of employee heads of households were not working, but in 1981, that had increased to 10 per cent. The survey showed that the average weekly expenditure for these households in 1981 was £106.6 (?NZ234.52), about 71 per cent of the corresponding expenditure of households whose head was employed. In homes where both partners worked, their average grdss weekly income was 25 per cent higher than in similar households where the married woman was not working.

More British houses had telephones in 1981, 76 per cent, compared with 67 per cent two years earlier.