Goods and Services

The introductory chapter mentioned some exploratory studies of consumer detriment which, through surveys and observation, attempted to assess its magnitude in a few limited areas of consumer spending. In this chapter Alisdair Aird looks more broadly at the measurement of consumer detriment using published and other statistics on the whole spectrum of consumer spending on goods and services. He shows that poor households tend to get much worse value for money for precisely those items which take the largest slice of their budgets, and that in consequence they may face a cost of living as much as ten per cent higher than an average family.