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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xlii There is, however, as already mentioned, a very important difference between the services obtained for the payment of rent in England and in Germany. When an English workman has paid his rent he has in nearly all cases not only paid for the use of the rooms that he inhabits, but also for all the services provided by the Local Authority out of the rates. The landlord, that is to say, in most cases pays the rates for which the tenant would other wise be directly liable, and recoups himself out of the rent charged. In a few cases in England and Wales where such payment by the landlord is not in force an amount equivalent to the rates was added by the investigator to the rent paid by the tenant, so that the rents stated in the Report on the United Kingdom in all cases include, or cover, the payment of rates. But in Germany local taxation is paid by means of an addition to the State income tax, and, consequently, the workman who has paid his rent has nevertheless still to pay taxes. The rents of the two countries may be rendered strictly comparable as regards the services covered by the rent paid only by deducting from the English rent a proportion equivalent to that paid on account of local rates (so as to exclude local taxation on both sides of the account), or by adding to the German rent a proportion equivalent to the average income tax paid by a work man inhabiting a tenement of each given size (so as to include local taxation on both sides). The latter process, however, offers such great difficulties that the attempt to form any such estimate has had for the present to be abandoned. Even as regards the first process, there are unfortunately no official statistics which enable the exact relation of local rates to rents in England to be determined. Accordingly, with a view to making some estimate as to the amount of rates paid by the working classes in the towns investigated, the Local Authority of each town on which a report had been made, was asked to state, if possible, the total rates paid during the year 1905 on typical working-class tenements of the predominant rents given in the report on their town. From replies received from 50 towns it is possible to estimate that local rates form in most cases from 20 to 26 per cent, of the total rent paid by the tenant, or an average of about 23 per cent. In a number of towns, however, this includes the rate for water, which is frequently, though not always, a municipal service ; and this particular service is also generally included in the rent in German towns. The amount of the water rate has not always been distinguished in the replies received, but in those cases in which information is given the water rate amounts usually to about 5 per cent, of the rent. As an approximate estimate, then, it appears that local rates, less the water rate, may be taken as forming some 18 per cent, of the rent paid for working-class tenements in the industrial towns of England and Wales. If this deduction is made from English rents, so as to render them more comparable with the German figures, we find that German rents (apart from local taxation) bear to English rents (apart from the portion that has to be allocated by the landlord to local taxation) the ratio of 101 to 82, or 123 to 100. In other words, the work man in a German town pays for housing accommodation about one-quarter more than the workman in an English town, for the same number of rooms, exclusive in both cases of local taxation. (ii.) Prices and Budgets. Prices.—The difficulties in the way of any complete comparison of the relative prices ruling for similar commodities in England and in Germany, so far as they affect the expenditure of the working classes of the two countries are sufficiently obvious from what has been said above as to the differences between the budgets. The German drinks coffee, not tea ; he eats grey bread not white ; he consumes practically no mutton and a good deal of pork. Further than this it must be remembered that some commodities which are nominally . the same are yet not in all cases strictly comparable. Thus German meat is in general sold without bone and without fat, as mentioned above, while bacon is chiefly sold as pure fat for cooking purposes, &c., and the typical German Limburg cheese is unknown in England. Neglecting, however, such minor differences, the predominant prices paid by the working classes of the two countries for commodities quoted in both were as follows :—

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