Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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xli The Table shews an approximate equality of rents that is somewhat surprising, more particularly when it is remembered that the English rents cover all local taxation while the German rents do not, local taxation in Germany being paid in the form of an income tax. If the mean of the index numbers in the last column might be taken as representing roughly the rent level in Germany as compared with that in England, we should find the German rent level slightly, though very slightly, the lower of the two, in the proportion of 99 : TOO. A comparison on these lines, though apparently straightforward, is however liable to be somewhat misleading, for the reason that rents of two, three and four-roomed tenements were not obtained from all the towns investigated in each case. It is necessary, therefore, to adopt some more perfect method of comparison less open to possible bias. This has been done by reworking all the rent index numbers for German towns to the basis used for the United Kingdom, viz., the mean predominant rents of tenements in the middle zone of London. In the Table below are given the rent index numbers so obtained for the towns investigated in Germany as compared with London, the index numbers having been calculated precisely as in the case of the towns of the United Kingdom, and being directly comparable with the figures of the Report on those towns (Cd. 3864, p. xv. and Table E, p. 1.). Rent Index Numbers of German Towns estimated on the London basis, in descending order. Town. Berlin Stuttgart Düsseldorf Hamburg Aschaffenburg Dortmund ... Mannheim ... Essen Königsberg ... Munich Solingen Index No. Town 100 97 79 70 69 68 66 63 62 62 62 Elberfeld Barmen Bochum Dresden Breslau Nuremberg Remscheid Bremen Leipzig Aachen Crefeld Index No. Towr 58 57 57 57 56 56 56 55 54 53 53 Plauen Dantzig Mülhausen Stettin Königshütte Magdeburg Chemnitz Brunswick Zwickau Stassfurt Oschersleben Index No. 53 49 49 48 47 44 42 39 38 34 28 The whole series of numbers is very similar to that given for English towns, but the rent levels of German towns show a somewhat greater variation than those in the English table. Of the 73 English towns 40, or 55 per cent., fall within the group of index numbers 50 to 59 ; 23 per cent, have higher index numbers and 22 per cent, lower. Of the German towns 12, or only 36 per cent., fall within the same group 50 to 59, while 33 per cent, of the towns show higher index numbers and 30 per cent, lower. For the English towns there are 36 index numbers higher than 55, and 35 lower, and the arithmetic mean is 56'2 ; for the German towns there are 15 index numbers higher than 56 and 15 lower, and the arithmetic mean is 57*0. The ratio of the arithmetic mean for Germany to that in England is 101 : 100, and this ratio, or the index number 101, is taken for the purposes of this report, as representing approximately the rent level in Germany as compared with England. It is evident from the result of this method of calculation and from the preceding estimate that there is no great difference one way or the other between the rents payable for a given number of rooms of working-class accommodation in the industrial towns of the two countries. 29088

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