U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR J. D. Hodgson, Secretary

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS
Geoffrey H. Moore, Commissioner

1972

Preface

This report is a supplement to BLS Bulletin 1570-5: Three Standards of Living for an Urban Family of Four Persons, Spring 1967. The basic bulletin describes the historical background of the family budget program, discusses the concepts and procedures of the current budgets, and documents the data sources and estimating methods for each of the budget components. It also lists the average annual quantities of items to determine the costs of the three budget levels (appendix A); describes the specifications used to collect or estimate prices for the lower and higher budgets, which differ from those used in the intermediate budget (appendix B); shows the population weights for combining individual metropolitan area and nonmetropolitan regional costs to U.S. urban averages (appendix C); and provides a list of the Bureau's previous budgets and related references (appendix D). Specifications for the intermediate budget were published in Bulletin 1570-3.

The complete list of bulletins in the current family budget series is as follows: Bulletin 1570-1 gives the autumn 1966 costs of the City Worker's Family Budget for a Moderate Living Standard and describes the change in this budget over the last two decades (issued October 1967).

Bulletin 1570-2 describes the Revised Equivalence Scale for estimating budget costs for families of different size, age, and type (issued as preliminary October 1967 and final November 1968).

Bulletin 1570-3 reports on the autumn 1966 Pricing Procedures, Specifications, and Average Prices used for the intermediate budget (issued August 1968).

Bulletin 1570-4 gives the autumn 1966 costs of the Retired Couple's Budget for a Moderate Living Standard (issued June 1968).

Bulletin 1570-5 gives the spring 1967 estimates for Three Standards of Living for an Urban Family of Four Persons (issued March 1969).

Bulletin 1570-6 gives the spring 1967 estimates for Three Budgets for a Retired Couple in Urban Areas of the United States (issued May 1970).

Bulletin 1570-6. A supplement gives the spring 1969 and spring 1970 estimates for Three Budgets for a Retired Couple in Urban Areas of the United States (issued November 1971).