STANDARD OF LIVING. The term "Standard of Liv ing" has two distinct meanings. As used by the leading econo mists from Malthus to the present day, it has a strictly ,technical meaning. It also has a loose, general and semi-popular meaning. In the strictly technical sense it means the scale of living which the average individual of any given group considers preferable to marriage, or which he must be sure of maintaining before he will marry and undertake the support of a family. In the loose and general sense it means merely the list of things which the aver age individual of any given class happens to be consuming at a given time and place. In the technical sense, it is a dynamic factor in determining the density of population, the labour supply, the rate of wages, and the possibility of future improvement of economic conditions. In the general sense it is merely a descrip tion of the way people are actually living in a given time and place. The standard of living, in this popular sense, has little economic significance.
In the strictly technical sense, a man who will marry and beget children without any regard whatsoever to his ability to provide for the needs of wife and children, has, literally, no standard of living at all. It is safe to say that the only creatures who thus thoughtlessly mate and breed are those which, like plants and animals, lack the capacity for thinking of the future. A standard of living, in this technical sense, is something which goes with intelligence and foresight, on the one hand, and responsibility for one's offspring on the other.
Similarly, those who will marry and undertake the support of families as soon as they feel able to provide the bare necessaries of life are said to have a low standard of living. Conversely, those who will not marry until they are reasonably certain of being able to afford a great many luxuries as well as all the necessaries and decencies of life, are said to have a high standard of living. Thus a standard of living is always relative and consists of the number of desirable things which the individual considers more desirable than the domestic satisfactions which come with marriage. A
high standard of living may result either from a weakening of sex and domesticity or from a strengthening of the desire for other things, while a low standard may result either from exag gerated sexual and domestic desires or from weakened desires for other things. In any case, the standard of living of workers plays the same part in determining wages as the cost of produc ing a commodity plays in determining its price.
It is obvious, to begin with, that standards of living, as thus technically conceived, have a profound influence upon the eco nomic well being of nations and of classes within a nation. If the standard of living of every individual of a group, either territorial or occupational, is high, it insures against territorial over-population or occupational congestion. If no one would undertake to support a family until he was reasonably certain of being able to educate his children, to house them comfortably, and provide them with a motor car, it is reasonably certain that no children would be legitimately born except in families which could afford these things. Besides, such a country, in the absence of immigration, would never have any more people than could afford these things. Disasters and bankruptcies might reduce some to want, but normally there would be no want. On the other hand, if every one would marry and undertake the support of children as soon as he was able to provide a bare physical subsistence, it is certain that a great many children would be born in families which could only afford bare physical subsistence. In other words, wide-spread poverty would be the normal state of large masses of people. In the above characterization we have coupled both sex and domesticity as factors in a low standard of living. In a rather strict and narrow sense however, it is a relatively strong sexual desire rather than a high development of domesticity which characterizes a low standard of living. A highly developed domes ticity would lead an intelligent person to desire not merely chil dren, but the welfare of his future children. This would lead to some postponement of marriage until one could provide for their welfare.