世論 What Japan Thinks

After looking up a handy internet reference, it seems that the original Japanese version of this article misinterpreted what Engel’s Law really is, but don’t let that spoil the report from japan.internet.com on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into family budgets and communication costs.

Demographics

On the 28th of July 2007 331 married women aged between 30 and 59 who were members of the JR Tokai Express Research monitor group successfully completed an online questionnaire. 59.8% of the sample were in their thirties, 28.4% in their forties, and 11.8% in their fifties.

There’s an interesting social point here that traditionally it is the woman who looks after the family budget, with the husband handing over his pay packet and getting a small sum of pocket money back to last him through the month, thus they chose married women as the best judges, presumably, of the family finances.

For me, communications comes to just under 20,000 yen, helped by having an extremely cheap fibre connection – under 3,000 yen, and a bundled phone deal with our cable company that works out rather cheap. Don’t ask me how much that is in relation to monthly outgoings, however!

Engel’s law states that the ratio of food costs to total budget tends to decrease as salary increases, but this survey does not report results from Q1SQ2 in relation to salaries, so one can conclude that either the more detailed survey results back this up, or they are, as suggested above, misusing the term.

Research results

Q1: Currently, as a household which of the following kinds of communication bills do you pay? (Sample size=331, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Mobile phone bill (to SQs)	322	97.3%
Fixed line telephone bill (to SQs)	309	93.4%
Fixed line (from dialup to fibre) internet connection bill (to SQs)	287	86.7%
Hotspot public LAN bill (to SQs)	4	1.2%
Don’t pay any communication bills	2	0.6%
Other	0	0.0%

Q1SQ1: Currently, how much in total do you pay per month on average for the above kinds of communication bills? (Sample size=329)

Less than 1,000 yen	0.0%
1,000 to 4,999 yen	2.4%
5,000 to 9,999 yen	20.7%
10,000 to 19,999 yen	53.2%
20,000 to 49,999 yen	23.1%
50,000 yen or more	0.6%

Q1SQ2: Relative to your food, accomodation, heat, light and other costs, about what percentage do you pay per month on the above kinds of communication bills? (Sample size=329)

Less than 5%	25.2%
5% to 10%	31.3%
10% to 20%	25.2%
20% to 30%	5.5%
30% to 40%	2.7%
40% to 50%	0.9%
50% to 60%	0.3%
More than 60%	0.0%
Don’t know	8.8%