Surviving Working Class Household Budget Summaries Collected by the Ministry of Labour, April 1938

Population decentralisation from inner-urban areas to new suburban communities has constituted a major long-term social and economic trend over the last century. For the working-classes, suburbanisation first became significant during the interwar period; with about a quarter of urban working-class families moving to the suburbs. Moves to private and municipal suburban housing estates had important socio-economic impacts, foreshadowing trends that were to become more generally obvious during the post-1945 period. These included major shifts in household consumption patterns, with an increase in the proportion of expenditure devoted to accommodation, furniture, consumer durables, and other items necessary to meet the social expectations of the new communities. Such priorities were often met via cut-backs in items of daily consumption, such as food, fuel and lighting. Suburbanisation was also associated with other important changes in working-class lifestyles, including the diffusion of new notions of ‘respectability’, neighbourliness, and community relations.<br> <br> The project examined these changes mainly via the composition and analysis of two databases: a quantitative database of surviving working-class household budget summaries collected by the Ministry of Labour in April 1938 and a qualitative database of biographical accounts concerning working-class people who moved from traditional inner-urban accommodation to owner-occupation, or suburban council housing, during the interwar period. <br>