Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
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. 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.
Main Topics:
The database covers budget summaries for April 1938 taken from 99 surviving household budget summaries collected by the Ministry of Labour in April 1938 preserved at the National Archives (NA: LAB 17/8-106) and a further 524 deposited at the University of Bangor Library Archives (Ms. 26441-7). The data was entered into a spreadsheet under 149 separate fields including all entries covered by the budget summaries with the exception of individual items under the food and drink category (for which only aggregate consumption was recorded). Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.
Purposive selection/case studies
Transcription of existing materials
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
