Household Textiles Consumption by Farm and City Families: Assortment Owned, Annual Expenditures, and Sources¹

Abstract

A total of 510 rural farm and 630 city families in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska were inter viewed in detail about their consumption of household textiles during a 1‐year period in 1970–71. Goals of the project were to describe the consumption process and to develop bud gets for household textiles; this paper reports some findings on the first goal. Analysis of data was mainly by multiple regression. Farm and city families were similar on most measures of household textiles consumption; apparent differences in spending resulted from differences in income distri butions and proportions of families that moved. Income was positively related to expendi tures, assortment owned, and acquisition of items from several supplementary sources, but results obtained using dummy variables revealed that these relationships were sometimes complex. If a family had moved during the year, its expenditures were markedly higher than those of comparable families that had not moved. Age of wife (perhaps representing length of time since family formation) was inversely related to several variables. Unex plained variance remained high although many different equations were tried; great varia tion is probably characteristic of household textiles consumption.

Consumers' Priorities for Flame Retardant Protection

“…The idea of choices among characteristics has long been recognized in clothing selection research (Anspach, 1959), and, more recently, in clothing consumption research (Crown, 1978;Jenkins and Dickey, 1976;Kundel, 1976;Margerum, 1976;Schutz and Phillips, 1976;Winakor, 1975;Wylie, Crown, and Morris, 1977). In several of the more recent studies the researchers used theoretical foundations from marketing or economics.…”

Development of Standard Budgets for Household Textiles for Farm and City Families

“…The second major objective of the research project, inseparable from that of budget development, was to describe the process of household textiles consumption (Winakor, 1975). Because no detailed analysis of the household textiles consumption of large numbers of families was known to exist, it was not possible to state when the research was planned whether budgets for household tex-tiles should specify adjustments for such factors as family size, type of dwelling unit, or available laundry facilities.…”

“…The three sampling locations were the adjoining cities of Omaha, Nebraska The farm and city samples were designed to include a sufficient number of families in the low-to-moderate income ranges to provide ample data for preparing budgets, and also to include families with a wide range of incomes to permit examination of the effects of income on household textiles consumption. Details of eligibility requirements, sampling, and interviewing, as well as results of analysis of consumption data obtained in the survey, are reported in Greeley (1973), Thomas (1975), Winakor (1975), and Wolf (1973).…”

“…Each family's food cost for a year was estimated using the U.S. Department of Agriculture low-cost food plan for the North Central region for December, 1970 (&dquo;Cost of Food at Home,&dquo; 1971, p. 35).3 The ratio of the lower limit of the family's income class (as shown in Winakor, 1975, Table 2) to its estimated food cost was then computed.4 4 Calculated income-food cost ratios for all families in the samples averaged 5.3 for farm families and 7.0 for city families (both standard deviations were 3.7). Of the farm families, 26 percent had income-food cost ratios below 3.0-that is, food expenditures on the low-cost plan would require more than one-third of their incomes-whereas only 9 percent of city families had income-food cost ratios below 3.0.…”

“…In the case of household textiles, the inventory is probably the most useful part of the budget, since annual acquisitions and expenditures by established families are usually quite small. In the average family, total spending for household textiles accounts for less than one percent of annual income (Winakor, 1975) and spending can fluctuate greatly from year to year. But inventory standards are needed for newly-formed families in the process of accumulating stocks of household textiles, families whose stocks have been wiped out by disasters, and those wishing to compare their stocks with some kind of benchmark.…”