Materialien aus der Bildungsforschung Nr. 41 Armin Triebel ZWEI ...

XVJIi
Summary
Private consumption has been considered in the past decades usually in
regard to the income situation of individuals or families - the main question
being 'How is consumption affected by income?'. This book follows a slightly
different approach. Without ignoring the importance of income to consumption
it stresses the interrelation of social status and consumption. The main interest
is to establish the influence of social class on consumption within a stable
income range. So far, this approach resumes a mode of analyzing economic
phenomena from a sociological perspective not unusual in earlier German
social research fallen into oblivion since the 1920's.
The Berlin File of Household Budgets is the data base which was created specially
to this purpose. It comprises about 5,000 private household budgets
originating from separately published sources, 1901 to 1937. The heads of the
household are members of the lower and middle classes who lived in cities and
small towns in the German Reich. All relevant details were entered including
the occupation given of the head of the household which is considered as the
main indicator of social class. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First a
scheme of classes of blue and white collar labourers and civil servants was
established. The names of occupation different for each household were
standardized and fitted into the scheme of occupational classes (chapter 3).
The expenses made in these classes for selected items of consumption were
then compared using variance analysis and regression analysis methods
(chapter 5). In two preliminary chapters (chapters 2 and 4) supplementary
information is given. Chapter 6 contains additional information on the
sources.
The results of the analysis partly contradict some widely held assumptions.
Though starting off from the premise of the working class being highly differentiated
almost nothing like this could be proved in terms of household
consumption. In fact, blue-collar workers seem to have formed a class of its
own with fairly consistent preferences for substantial food and pleasures of
any kind, luxury food-stuff and entertainment, but very few education. As
far as, on the contrary, white-collar employees and some ranks of the civil
service are concerned there is, even with incomes being the same, a consumption
pattern clearly opposite to the proletarian one, but full of variety
and not easily to be characterized. Some speculative inferences about the
emergence of post-war multiplicity of life-styles may be attached to these
findings. Even in the first four decades of our century the working-class, at
least so far as its life-style is concerned, seems to have been barren, unflexible
und clearly not responsive to the on-going process of social change.