Chapter 1The Family Budget
The average London family spends almost twice as much on housing as does a family living in Wales.
This may not seem perhaps to be the most inspiring piece of information with which to begin a book on economics. Yet it is one which is full of exciting implications for an economist.
Why, one wonders, does the Londoner spend nearly £15 a week putting a roof over his head, while the Welshman spends only a little more than half that amount?1 What reasons lie behind this rather startling difference?
The explanation is unlikely to be a simple one. High housing expenditure in London certainly has something to do with the price of houses there compared to those in Wales. But that is not, in a real sense, a basic cause, for ...
Get Economic Behaviour (Routledge Revivals) now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
