Abstract
“[...] Naturally it would be quite impossible to follow up all the numerous and varied lines of inquiry which have been suggested by the preceding discussion of the use of household budget
investigations. The examination of the data which have been collected will be carried out in two separate sections and for two distinct purposes. In the first section the budgets will be compared, somewhat elaborately, with those of' the New Zealand inquiry into household expenditure carried out by the Census and Statistics Office in 1919, the object being to see the differences in the way in which the income is spent even when the families compared are of the same size and when the income is about the same, and to see whether any marked changes have taken place in the consumptive habits of families since that time. Sweeping generalisations based on only fifteen budgets will, of course, be avoided. As the budgets have been obtained from families covering a very wide range of income, attention will be directed towards the influence of the size of the income
upon family expenditure. Wherever possible the relation between expenditure, size of family, and the age of the individuals constituting the family will be investigated. In passing, mention will be made of the size of the families examined and of the sources of the family income.
The second section deals more particularly with the weighting of prices in the compilation of the New Zealand retail index numbers. In the earlier discussion the peculiarities of each budget will have been emphasised so that we shall have some idea of the usefulness of an index number as an indicator of changes in the cost of living of a single family~ With the limited material at our disposal we shall critic ally examine the weighting of the subgroups in the food, clothing, and miscellaneous groups, and finally the weighting of each of the five important groups used in order to obtain the all group index number. A short discussion of seasonal fluctuations in expenditure will be given. [...]” [Extract from thesis]