Britain: An official handbook > 1977

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
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accounts for a smaller share of total consumer expenditure than it did ten years
ago. Increases have taken place, however, in expenditure on motor vehicles,
housing, alcoholic drink, recreation and entertainment. The proportion of
expenditure on clothing and footwear has fallen.
The general level of nutrition is high. The movement towards a greater use of
convenience (including frozen) foods, and imported foods in the 1960s, has been
partly offset by a reversion to a slightly less expensive diet. The general picture
of British food consumption between 1972 and 1975 shows a drop in con¬
sumption of meat, eggs, oils and fats, sugar, fruit and vegetables, and increases
in dairy products, potatoes and grain products. Tea remains the most popular
drink but many more people are drinking coffee than before (mainly ‘instant’
coffee). A greater willingness to try unfamiliar foods has given rise to a wider
availability of imported products, as well as to restaurants serving the national
dishes of other countries.
Over the period 1964-74 total consumption of beer (Britain’s most popular
alcoholic drink) rose by 30 per cent; that of spirits by 77 per cent; and that of
wine 123 per cent. Indications are that in 1975 consumption of spirits and wine
fell slightly, although beer consumption increased.
Many of the differences between socio-economic groupings have been
reduced during the twentieth century, but persist in such matters as educational
attainment, standards of health and even mortality rates. Differences between
the counties and regions of Britain have also been identified, notably the con¬
centration of higher employment incomes in London and south-east England.
Big town houses have been converted into flats, offices or nursing homes,
while some country estates have been opened to the public or have become
schools, rehabilitation or recreation centres or wild-life parks. The proportion
of the working population in non-manual occupations is growing and an
increasing number of people in professional or managerial occupations are the
children of manual workers.
A broadly similar way of life is shared by many members of the immigrant
communities who have settled ?n Britain since the 1950s, though, as new arrivals,
mainly from Commonwealth countries, sometimes with a poor command of the
English language or none at all, they may face problems of limited employment
opportunities and inadequate housing. Evidence of immigrant cultures can be
seen in the urban areas where most of them have settled (national dress worn by
many Asian women, Asian films and shops, market stalls with West Indian
fruit and vegetables) and many schools have adapted their curricula to
allow host and immigrant communities to understand each other’s traditions
better. The needs of immigrant children for language training are being met in
special centres run by the education authorities, of workers, increasingly, in
colleges of further education and in the factories themselves, and of Asian
women in groups run by local community relations councils and other voluntary
organisations.
The greatest social changes have been in the lives of women. During the
twentieth century there has been a notable shortening of the proportion of a
woman’s life devoted to the care of children. A woman marrying at the end of
the nineteenth century would probably have been in her middle twenties, and
would be likely to have seven or eight children of whom four or five survived
to the age of five. By the time the youngest was 15 she would have been in her
early fifties and would expect to live a further 20 years, during which custom,
opportunity and health made it unusual for her to do paid work. Today women
marry younger and have fewer children. Usually a woman’s youngest child will
be 15 when she is 45, and she can expect to live another 35 years and is likely to