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CHAPTER X
HIGH COST OF LIVING
TEMPORARY NATURE OF RECOMMENDATIONS
178. Our attempt to establish a satisfactory scale for a temporary high cost of living allowance, the need for which was manifest from the first day on which we heard evidence, has not satisfied us. What we propose is the best we have been able to achieve on the available evidence. It is conservative and it may serve as a temporary measure until adequate statistics have been assembled and scientifically interpreted in what we hope may become a quarterly or at most a half-yearly survey of the cost of living.
UNIVERSITY SURVEY
179. No attempt has yet been made towards the compilation of a comprehensive series of cost of living indices. In 1939-1941 the Economics Department of the University of Hong Kong attempted to establish an index for the poorest employed class. Experience from the first proved that the filling of forms by people in this class gave almost no satisfactory data. It was found necessary to make use of the services of a large number of Cantonese speaking students of Economics who had been trained in the procedure of this kind of investigation. A generalised report on this survey remains but all the materials on which it was based were destroyed during the Japanese occupation. Nevertheless the report is likely still to have a value when the compilation of indices is taken in hand.
THE FOOD AND FUEL INDEX
180. The Labour Office compiles weekly a Food and Fuel Index on which "Rehabilitation Allowance", a high cost of living Allowance paid to skilled and unskilled labour, is based. The weakness of this index for our purpose is that it surveys too narrow an area of commodities and is limited to what in effect is a single class of the community.
SURVEYS BY THE GOVERNMENT STATISTICAL OFFICER
181. Two surveys made against pressure of time by the Statistical Officer have been of very great service, one based on budgets furnished by members of the European Civil Service Association and one covering incomes ranging between $200 and $800 a month, i.e. what can broadly be called the "white collar" class of Government servants. These surveys are submitted as part of the material on which this Report is based, the first being a cost of living inquiry based on a limited number of family budgets and the second aiming at establishing a retail price index. We were not able to accept all the conclusions drawn from these surveys but they are the only attempt at the scientific consideration of the problem made since the University enquiry before the war and the Commission has been grateful for the guidance derived from them.
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EVIDENCE, FROM BUDGETS
182. Meantime the Commission received a very large number of budgets from men in all salary ranges in the Government Service. By close study, comparison and examination of the people who had submitted them we were able to gain a good general impression of how people are living and of the difficulties of nearly all classes of Government servants except skilled and unskilled labourers, who, it is commonly agreed, are living better now than before the war. The men in the professional and administrative grades generally manage to avoid falling into debt, which is not the case among the people whose pay ranges between about $200 and $800 a month. Our examination of a large number of witnesses convinced us that men were drawing on their savings, had used up the greater part of such pay as they may have received for the war years, were driven to all manner of evening and sparetime work in order from month to month to meet essential expenditure. Overwork, the worry of debt or of vanishing resources have unquestionably had a serious influence on the efficiency of these men, have driven many good men to seek the better terms offered in private employ, have created unrest and have tried the loyalty of good servants of the Government. The men on the higher salary ranges have on the whole accepted cheerfully standards of living more austere than are reasonable in the geographical and climatic conditions of the Colony. A few of the budgets that we have examined show that among the better paid, small savings can be made, but generally a man's salary appears entirely