My weekly newspaper column for 2/15/07. Also available online at:
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2007/02/15/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis80.txtThere’s needs, and then there’s needs
By Rich Lewis, February 15, 2007
As my kids and their friends began to leave the safe harbor of home, I found myself talking with them on occasion about what kind of money they would need to float their own boats on the high seas of independent living.
We drew up a list of what they thought they would need, estimated each cost, arrived at a grand total, and then figured out how much they would have to earn to pay for it all. In other words, a budget.
While much depended on where they wanted to live, the total usually landed in the area of $24,000. Then I would point out that having $24K to spend required them to earn more like $30K because of a little thing called taxes. Kids don’t think much about paying taxes and you could see their brows furrow when it got added to the bottom line.
Suddenly, they saw that those $9-an-hour jobs that had made them feel so flush while living at home left a $10,000 gap between “need” and “have” when on their own.
I often also got to talking with other people my age about how much less money it took to live on our own back in, say, the 1970s. We understand that inflation, especially in rents, has made a huge difference — but usually agree there has been a big change in what people now “need” to function in the world.
For that reason, I was very intrigued this week when I came across a recent survey from the Pew Research Center. The survey, which came out in December and is available online (
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/323/luxury-or-necessity), is called “Things we can’t live without: The list has grown in the past decade.”
Pew drew up a list of 14 different consumer products “designed to help make everyday life more productive, more convenient, more comfortable, more efficient or more entertaining.”
Pew then asked 2,000 people whether they considered these products to be “luxuries” or “necessities.” The results were then compared to earlier surveys.
Pew sliced and diced by age and income and so on, “But one pattern was consistent,” Pew found. “Wherever there has been significant change in the past decade in the public’s judgement about these items, it’s always been in the direction of necessity.”
Noting the old adage that “necessity is the mother of invention,” Pew says the survey “serves as a reminder that the opposite is also true: invention is the mother of necessity.”
For example: In 1973, only 54 percent of those surveyed said a clothes dryer was a necessity. But in 2006, 83 percent said they “needed” a dryer. Indeed, I remember very well hanging clothes out on the line well into the 1980s — but I don’t think my kids would know a clothespin from a bowling pin.
Here’s a good one: In 1983, only 38 percent said home air conditioning was a necessity. Today, it’s 70 percent. We bought our first home air conditioner in 2005 — because our kids were complaining about the heat in their bedrooms.
I remember when I was buying my older son his first car and had a line on a sweet, used Honda — until he told me that one of his few “deal breakers” was that it had to have air conditioning. It didn’t, so that was off the table. In 1973, only 13 percent of those surveyed listed car air conditioning as a necessity — now it’s 59 percent.
Dishwashers — between 1973 and 1976, only 10 to 13 percent said they needed one. Last year, it was 35 percent — triple the number.
Microwaves jumped from 32 to 68 percent “necessity” between 1996-2006.
Cell phones were such a geeky rarity in 1996 they weren’t even included in the survey. In 2006, 49 percent said they absolutely couldn’t do without one.
Cable or satellite TV? The necessity factor double from 17 to 33 percent between 1996-2006.
Only 4 percent said they needed a home computer in 1983 — today it’s 51 percent.
And, weirdly enough, but super good news for Apple, 3 percent of those surveyed in 2006 said they needed an iPod. “I won’t be eating today; I have to save up for my iPod.”
Age makes a difference. Twice as many people 18-29 years old (55 percent) need a home computer as people over 65 (25 percent). And twice as many over-65s (50 percent) need cable or satellite TV as people 18-29 (24 percent). So the oldsters need to watch the Food Network while the younguns need YouTube.
Income also makes a difference: 54 percent of families that make more than $100,000 a year “need” a high-speed Internet connection. Only 19 percent of families making less than $50,000 need that service. In fact, across the whole 14 items, the rich “need” things much more than the not-so-rich — 45 percent of those in the $100K bracket named 10 or more of the 14 items as “necessities.” Only 15 percent of those making $50K or less needed so many things. They say that money does things to your priorities — and this survey certainly doesn’t refute that observation.
And here’s a detail of local interest as Cumberland, Perry and nearby counties transition from “rural” to “suburban” lifestyles: one-third of rural residents needed 0-5 of the 14 items but only 24 percent of their suburban and city cousins could “get by” with that few things. And that was irrespective of income.
As for me, I confess — I need 10 of the 14 items. I could be perfectly happy without the iPod or the cell phone — but the computer, high-speed connection and washing machine only leave over my dead body.
———
Rich Lewis’ e-mail address is:
rlcolumn@comcast.net.
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