When I started to write regularly for The Irish Times 47 years ago, one of my first contributions was a series of articles based on the first Irish Household Budget Inquiry, which gave details of the quantity of each foodstuff consumed by families with different levels of income. From these details I was able, with assistance from a nutrition expert, to calculate the adequacy of the Irish diet.
At that time, and indeed ever since, the average calorific intake of Irish people was amongst the highest in the world - both in terms of low-cost foods like potatoes and bread, but also in terms of meat consumption. For Ireland was a meat-producing country which enjoyed market access to only one country, Britain, whose cheap food policy depressed Irish meat prices.
It was not so surprising, therefore, that, although we were then a very poor country, nutrition was generally adequate in 1951-52 except for the poorest households, those with five children and an income of barely £1 per week per head. As I recall, in that group there was a significant dietary deficiency only in relation to milk. However, such poor one-person families had to spend over half their income on food, so that in all other respects they lived in appalling poverty.
At the same time I also contributed to The Irish Times a less serious series on how to establish a wine-tasting group, articles that I intended to be anonymous. Unfortunately the paper muddled the two series, so I never got any credit for my nutritional study whilst getting an undeserved reputation for a knowledge of wines.
Years later, however, I achieved a minor political triumph with the aid of a subsequent Household Budget Inquiry. In a radio debate during the 1973 election campaign George Colley of Fianna Fβil had argued that food subsidies benefited the rich much more than the poor because, he said, a rich person spent six times as much on food as a poor person.
I knew instinctively that this figure was absurd, but it was not a round figure, so he must have got it from somewhere. The only possible source was the Household Budget Inquiry. As I was to have a TV debate with George Colley the following evening, I immediately consulted that source, and immediately found where he - or one of his advisers - had got this figure.
I brought this volume with me to the studio, wrapping it in an Evening Herald so that he would not see it. And, when he cited the same figure again, I asked, innocently: "Where did you get that figure?". "In the Household . . ." he began. "Budget Inquiry?", I interrupted. "Table 7, I think. But didn't you realise that your 'rich person' is in fact a family of five whilst your 'poor person' is a family of one?". He was visibly disconcerted, and quite unable to respond.
Did that episode, perhaps, contribute to my being named as minister for foreign affairs after that election? If so, thank you, Central Statistics Office. Well, the CSO has just published a new Household Budget Inquiry, based on research carried out between mid-1999 and mid-2000.
This new survey confirms a little-known feature of our household spending that has developed since the 1970s: in the "pensioner" type family (that with the smallest size and lowest income), there is a higher absolute level of per-capita spending on domestic food than in better-off families.
This may seem surprising. But it makes sense, for a combination of three reasons.
First of all, while social welfare pensions remain very small by comparison with the incomes of those still earning, they have improved sufficiently for low-income pensioners who live on their own not to have to skimp on food. And, in the second place, the low-income one-person family does not enjoy the economies of scale in food consumption that benefit families. But, most important of all is the fact that better-off families now consume a lot of their food away from home. In 1973 the proportion of spending on food by the highest-income households that was accounted for by meals away from home was only 7 per cent. By 1999-2000 this figure had risen to over 30 per cent, plus a further 9 per cent spent on the purchase of chips or other prepared foods. Thus barely three-fifths of spending by better-off families on food now goes on what might be described as "domestic" food.
There are, in fact, only a few individual foods in respect of which the highest-income families spend more per head than do the poorest one-person households. These are cheese, fish, breakfast cereals, cakes, sweets, chocolate, fruit juices and soft drinks consumed at home.
There are some other goods and services in respect of which per-capita spending is also higher in the case of the poorest one-person families - simply because the latter can't spread the household "overhead" over a number of family members.
These items are fuel and light (in respect of which spending per head is almost twice as high on the part of this group as in the case of the best-off families), cleaning materials, TV and video rental, and spending on telephones and on pets - two weapons against loneliness.
These data highlight the costs and difficulties faced by many of those who have to live on their own, which are often underestimated by those of us who live as part of a family. They should be borne in mind at Budget time.
When one looks at the goods and services on which spending by better-off people exceeds many times over that of the pensioner living alone, one gets further insights into other forms of deprivation faced by the latter group.
Holidays, entertainment, and car ownership are areas of spending in respect of which spending per head is between seven and 15 times greater in the case of better-off households. The difference all this makes in the quality of life of those concerned is huge.
All this has to be seen against the background of the fact that the £148 per head that we spent on average each week in 1999-2000 bought twice as much as did average spending per head in 1973, and three times as much as in 1951-52.
Even in the short span of years between 1987 and 2000, the number of households with dishwashers more than quadrupled, the number with videos quintupled, and the number with microwaves rose 11-fold. Two years ago three-quarters of households already owned a car - that figure must be a good deal higher after last year's huge level of car sales; two-thirds had a stereo; over half had double glazing and almost one-third had a computer.
Our average material living standards are high. But although no one goes hungry a substantial minority otherwise live in persistent poverty. We have yet to develop the sense of community solidarity that has led such countries as Finland and Sweden, whose per-capita Gross National Product and average material living standards are now lower than ours, effectively to eliminate poverty.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie