Life in 1916 Ireland: Stories from statistics

Photo: Patrick Street, Cork 1900

• The percentage expenditure weights in the table above were used to calculate the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in 1922. This basket of weights was based on data collected by the Ministry of Economic Affairs during the summer of 1922. The weights add up to 100 and show that, for example, 7.04% of the weight of the CPI was given to fuel and light.
• This work was carried out by sending 5,000 forms for the collection of Household Budgets to National School teachers in every school in the country who then distributed the forms to wage-earning households. Only 308 completed budgets, from 112 towns, were returned.
• These Household Budget forms asked the householder to detail the quantities and costs of all food consumed during the previous seven days in addition to expenditure on fuel and light, household requisites and other sundry items such as cigarettes.
• For the year ending June 1922 the householders were also asked to give (1) the cost of all clothing purchased, (2) the cost of materials purchased for clothing and (3) the cost of making-up clothes.
• These percentage expenditure weights tell us that just over 57% of average household expenditure was on food and non-alcoholic drink in 1922, compared to 11.4% in 2011 (see Table 4.11).
• 17.5% of household expenditure in 1922 was on clothing compared to 5.2% in 2011. 87% of average household spending in 1922 was on food, clothing, rent and fuel & light compared with 26.9% in 2011.
• The Consumer Price Index (CPI) today has weights for items which do not appear in the 1922 index e.g. transport, restaurants and hotels, recreation and culture, health and communications.
• Only one of these expenditure items is partially covered in the 1922 weights where a weight of 0.7% is given to meals eaten out of the home.
• One intriguing feature of the 1922 weights is that there is no mention of alcohol and there is no coverage of alcohol in the retail prices collected in 1914 (see Table 4.12).
• Alcoholic beverages have an expenditure weight of 2.3% in the 2011 Consumer Price Index. Alcohol was also excluded from the 1914 Cost of Living index for Great Britain and Ireland which was designed to measure the cost of living for working class households.

• The percentage expenditure weights in the table above were used to calculate the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in 2011. This basket of weights was based on data collected by the CSO in the Household Budget Survey 2009-2010. The weights add up to 100 and show that, for example, 14.17% of the weight of the CPI index was given to restaurants and hotels.
• The basket of weights used for the 2011 CPI is very different to that used for the 1922 CPI. The main difference is that 11.4% of the weights in the 2011 basket are used for food and non-alcoholic drink compared to over 57% in 1922.
• There is also much more variety in the items covered in the 2011 basket compared to one used in 1922. For example, items which appear in the 2011 basket and which did not appear in 1922 include alcohol, mortgage interest, health, recreation and culture, education and restaurants and hotels.

Photo: Tempest's shop interior, Co. Louth 1905

• These retail prices for food were collected in Irish towns in 1914 for use in compiling the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
• Although Ireland was an agricultural country producing plentiful supplies of fresh milk, condensed milk (both Irish and imported) features as an item in the CPI. One explanation for this is that fresh milk was hard to transport and store as there was very little access to refrigeration 100 years ago.
• Neither chicken nor fish are included in this list of food items used for the CPI in 1914 which implies that these food items were not regularly purchased, although presumably they were consumed by people who could keep their own chickens and do their own fishing.
• Two different kinds of tea were priced in 1914 - best tea and cheapest tea. The price of best tea, updated to 2014 prices using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), is €15.92 per pound which was very expensive for most households. Cheapest tea, at €9.79 per pound in 2014 prices, was also expensive and presumably was a luxury in most houses. The average price for the cheapest tea in a supermarket today would be about €2.30 per pound, (which is the equivalent of about 450 grams).
• Butter was also expensive, at €7.35 a pound in 2014 prices for Irish creamery butter, as also were eggs, at €4.90 for a dozen in 2014 prices.  Both of these basic items must have been difficult to afford in most households in 1914.

• If we look at the average prices of clothes in 1914 updated to 2014 prices using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the prices of the clothes do not seem unreasonable to us today in 2016.
• However, as the average wage was much lower in 1914, the clothes prices from 1914 were in fact very expensive.
• For example, the average income for a male national school teacher in 1916 was £83 11 shillings (see Table 2.15) which is about 32 shillings a week, close to the cost of a woman's heavy coat.

Photo: Henry O'Connell and Sons Provision Store, 1900-1910

• Prices were collected in 1914 for candles and for paraffin oil (used in paraffin lamps to provide lighting in homes) which illustrates that in 1914 electricity was rarely used in homes.
• The average price of a packet of 10 cigarettes in 1914, at 3 pence or €1.22 in 2014 prices, shows that cigarettes are less expensive than today, when a packet of 20 cigarettes costs over €10.

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