COST-OF-LIVING STATISTICS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20870, 9 November 1929, Page 10

COST-OF-LIVING STATISTICS.

COMPILATION OF FAMILY BUDGETS.

DISSENSION BY OTAGO LABOUR COUNCIL, A communication received from the Government Statistician seeking the cooperation of the Otago Labour Council in the compilation and collection of family cost of living budgets, to be spread over the months of March, April, and May of 1930, was discussed at a meeting of the council on Thursday night. Thirty delegates were present, the president (Mr W. G. Baird) presiding.

The letter stated that at three conferences of labour statisticians under the auspices of the International Labour Office of the League of Nations resolutions had been passed urging all countries adhering to the league to prepare for the revision of their’ cost of living index numbers. As an inducement to householders to keep accurate and detailed records -of household expenditure over the period the following money prizes will oe offered:—For householders in the North Island —one prize of £2O, three prizes of £5 each, and 15 prizes of £1 each. Similar prizes will be offered to householders in the South Island. The right is to be reserved to reduce the prizes proportionately if fewer than 500 completed budgets are received. The prizes will be awarded for the best properly-completed budgets. The collection is to be confined to householders whose incomes or earnings do not exceed £364 per annum, or £7 per week. The delegates to the council received this communication with mixed feelings. It was understood that the present cost-of-living figures were based on household budgets supplied in 1911 by 69 families at a time when there were 172,000 families in the Dominion, and that the 69 families represented only .04 of the total. - Bence, in the opinion of delegates, the present figures must of necessity be unreliable and out of date. It was alleged, however, that the cost of living figures at present in use had no relation to the basic wage. , For instance, the Department of Labour, in its annual report for 1014, published \a diagram allocating the expenditure of the worker’s wages, and in that diagram it was shown that rent absorbed 20.31 per cent, of his weekly income. The Court of Arbitration, however, fixed the basic wage at £4 0s 8d per week, and then claimed that it had given effect to the cost of living percentages. Now, 20.31 per cent, of £4 0s 8d is 16s. but, ns the average rental in Dancdin is £1 10s per week, the Labour movement claims that £1 10g should be 20.31 per cent of the workers’ weekly basic wage. Nevertheless, it was felt that the cost-of-living figures should be revised, although it was also recognised that the Court of Arbitration had operated to render ineffective the effort which the Government Statistician was about to make.

The object of a household budget should be to determine the expenditure necessary to enable a family of a certain size to live in reasonable comfort. The Court of Arbitration, it was said, had fixed the basic wage at Is lOd per hour, or £4 0s 8d per week. Therefore, the workers in receipt of that basic wage would have only that much to spend, and only that expenditure to record in their budgets. Such budgets could not give any idea of the reasonable requirements of a family, because, owing to the fact that workers could not purchase many of those reasonable requirements, their cost could not be recorded in the budgets. They could not record as spent that which they did not have to spend. Hence, in the opinion of the council, these budgets, as far as the workers on the basic wage were con cerned, would disclose only how the said workers spent the £4 0s Bd, but they would not give any indication of the reasonable requirements of which the workers had to deny themselves. Some of the delegates resented the practice of fixing wages on the cost of living, stating that the practice, in their opinion, placed the worker on a fodder basis like an animal. Others were of the opinion that the Government Statistician should be able to record how people in receipt of more than £364 per annum spent their incomes. It was decided to co-operate with the Government Statistician in having the budgets compiled, and to carry out the work on a uniform plan suggested by the National Council of the New Zealand Alliance of Labour.

It was also decided to request the Alliance of Labour.to compile a schedule setting out the reasonable requirements of an average family.