FAMILY LIVING IN FARM HOMES. 19 
SAVINGS. 
Life insurance was the only type of savings for which figures were 
tabulated. Expenditures for this averaged $42, or 2.1 per cent of 
the total expenditures among the 402 families. Many of the persons 
interviewed felt that other types of savings ought to make an import- 
ant item in the family budget, but there were too few cases of such 
savings to give a significant average. Others thought that money 
put back into the farm business or into permanent improvements on 
the house should be listed here. Many cases of inability to make 
both ends meet were reported, especially debts which would be met 
when last year’s grain crop was sold. 
COST-CONSUMPTION UNIT AND HOUSEHOLD-SIZE INDEX. 
Neither the household nor the family makes a satisfactory basis 
for comparing costs in families of as variable make-up as those found 
in farm homes. Both fail to take account of the fact that the num- 
ber, sex, and age of individuals composing the household make a dif- 
ference in needs for food, rent, clothing, and other items. The diffi- 
culty of finding a common unit has jerquantly been avoided in cost-of- 
living studies by selecting the “‘standard”’ family; that is, a family 
consisting of husband, wife, and three children, the sex and age of the 
children varying somewhat with different investigators. Such selec- 
tion, however, may prevent results from being representative of the 
group or the area studied unless the number of families included is 
very large. 
The per-capita unit, the adult equivalent, and what is sometimes 
termed the “adult-male equivalent,” represent efforts to reduce 
families of varying composition to a common unit of comparison. 
The per-capita unit is the simplest but fails to take account of the 
variations in individual demands due to sex and age. The adult- 
equivalent unit, which usually counts two children as equal in their 
requirements to one adult, also ignores sex and accurate age require- 
ments. This discrepancy has sometimes been partially removed by 
dividing the children among several age groups and increasing the 
_ allowance for each group in accordance with the age; but, even so, 
_ sex is disregarded and the results are unsatisfactory. 
Among the first attempts at arriving at an adult-male-equivalent 
unit in expenditures for all purposes was that of Ernst Engel from 
results of his studies of workingmen’s families. This started with 
the individual at infancy as unity and increased by one-tenth unit 
for each year of age up to and including the twentieth year for 
females and the twenty-fifth for males. . 
As study of the cost of living developed, separate scales for meas- 
uring cost consumption in the different groups of expenditures have 
appeared more and more desirable. In 1890 the United States 
Department of Labor adopted the following scale for reducing 
expenditures for food to the terms of an adult male: * 
SRM URMNIRRE tes Sens Hehe med a oa a lg sap a apes sd tan an = oo tsi 100 
a A et ie SB tie oS ead oie eres ae oe baie nt a ia 90 
Children from 11 to 14 years, inclusive. ................-..-..---- 90 
Children from 7 to 10 years, inclusive. .............-.------------ 75 
Sirens (ont 4 ta'G Veats, INCISIVE |... wan ee ~~ nnn eee ee nnn ne 40 
Children from 1 to 3 years, inclusive. .......... ee baked eens 15 
17 Die Lebenskosten Belgischer Arbeiter—Familien Friiher und Jetzt. Ernst Engel. 1895. 
18 Sixth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1890. U.S. Dept. Labor. P.621. 1891. 
