26 COST OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES 
SuMMARY 
Although measurement of the cost of living first developed 
from a more or less academic interest in sociological and 
economic problems, and although the first investigations 
were conducted almost entirely from this standpoint, these 
data were eventually applied to answer questions of a practi- 
cal nature. Thus, the adequacy of poor relief, the relative 
necessity for a tariff to protect the standard of living in 
different countries, and the sufficiency of wages have all 
been measured against required outlay for the maintenance 
of a minimum standard of living. 
Starting with investigations of how families and individuals 
actually were spending their incomes, budgets were later 
constructed to indicate the cost of maintaining a proper 
standard. This involved a determination of typical family 
units and of their standards of living. Two standards have 
been generally recognized: the so-called American minimum, 
measuring the actual cost of maintaining a fair standard of 
living according to conditions prevailing in any given locality; 
the other, the so-called standard of health and decency, 
which is one not yet generally found among unskilled laborers’ 
families, but which is the goal toward which they are striving. 
The actual cost of maintaining any standard of living de- 
pends on how many persons it is designed to provide for. 
The units used up to the present time in this country have 
recently come in for an increasing degree of challenge and it 
is likely that in the near future adjustments will be made so 
as to bring the theoretical unit both for men and for women 
more nearly into harmony with actual conditions. 
Nothing is more generally recognized than that the cost 
of living is a very specific problem, dependent not only on the 
standard of living, the size of the family, personal require- 
ments of occupation and taste, but also on climate and geo- 
graphical location with relation to transportation of necessi- 
ties or nearness to supply. For this reason, the only absolute 
measure of the cost of living is that which is worked out 
for each particular family. In generalizing, the greater the 
area covered or variety of types included, the less faithful 
is the picture painted. Thus, those estimates of the actual