Inflation: Who Is Hurt Worst?

Living costs have doubled since 1967, and the impact varies widely

Just as it has been doing each week for months, inflation last week pumped up the prices that Americans paid for their goods and services by another $3 billion or so. Billions of this, trillions of that: it is beginning to sound as if the national currency were McDonald's hamburgers. More than all the other measurements of gloom, the one statistic that people can really grasp and feel is that the U.S. enters 1979 with prices almost exactly double what they were in 1967, the date that the government uses to mark the beginning of the inflationary spiral.

The last decade has brought the most damaging price surge in the nation's history, and the elusive goal of relative stability remains far away. Though Americans are bringing home the richest paychecks of their lives, runaway prices have made the dreams of a decade earlier now seem like taunting fantasies. Almost everyone is suffering, and the pain for some is far worse than for others. The impact depends on a person's age, job, family status, region, buying and investing habits and many other factors.

The key question is not how much a family earns, but how it spends the money. To get as complete a picture as possible of the effects of inflation on Americans, the Labor Department periodically updates the 400-odd components in its Consumer Price Index, discarding products like pedal pushers and bobby pins and adding new items such as jogging suits and pocket calculators. As a general survey of how Americans spend, the technique is valid enough. But consumers are not automatons; they are 220 million individuals.

Prices can fluctuate widely for the same product or service in different communities. In fact, as indicated in the accompanying diagram of some 22 consumer items in Atlanta, a city chosen by TIME because it closely parallels national price trends, a large number of goods and services have risen far more than 100% since 1967, while others have gone up much less. Only one item--long-distance phone calls--has declined. (In many cities, of course, the cost of person-to-person and collect calls has risen substantially.)

Nationally, the steepest rises have come in life's necessities: food, clothing, shelter, transportation. Since poor people have less money to start with, they have been squeezed harder than the mad-as-hell middle class and affluent people. In Atlanta, however, housing is an exception. Overbuilding in recent years has held prices down. A three-bedroom house at $54,000 is still far beyond the reach of someone earning even twice as much as $6,191 a year, which is the federally set "poverty level" for a nonfarm family of four. But the average price of a house in Atlanta seems like a fire-sale bargain compared with the six-figure tags on similar homes in many parts of the North and West.

Americans who bought houses a decade ago are generally much better off than those who saved and delayed. Since the late 1960s, mortgage rates have almost doubled to just over 10%, and the average price of a new house has jumped from $24,600 to $65,700. Many families justly feel that they cannot afford a house, and they continue to pay rents that are climbing year after year. Property taxes also have been rising, but homeowners still come out better than the victimized renters because property taxes and mortgage interest payments can be deducted from federal and state income taxes.

All homeowners have been hard hit by climbing fuel bills, but some more than others. People in the Northeast have suffered worst because cold winters require more heating. Homeowners living in places with moderate climates, such as San Francisco or Atlanta, have escaped a large part of the impact.

At the same time, many city apartment dwellers have skirted the effects of rising gasoline prices--the fuel is almost two times costlier now than in 1967--because they depend on buses and subways. Farmers, small-town folks and suburbanites are not so fortunate, since they need automobiles. But farmers have been able to insulate themselves from stunning increases in food costs--up 117% since 1967--by producing much of what they eat. As a result of Medicare and Medicaid, the elderly and the poor have largely escaped the exploding cost of hospitals (medical-care services have risen 122% since 1967) and doctors (up 110%).

Though wages and salaries have risen, a mere doubling of income has not been enough to keep up with the doubling of prices because earners have been pushed into higher and higher tax brackets. White-collar workers and many professionals have suffered because they lack the means of organizing into special-interest lobbies to protect their paychecks. Corporate employees such as computer programmers and engineers have experienced a moderate loss in buying power, and librarians have seen the purchasing strength of their paychecks shrink by 11% since 1967, while college professors have had theirs shrivel by 17.5%.

Blue-collar workers have generally stayed ahead of inflation by winning wage increases so large that the payments lately have actually begun to help force up the cost of living for everybody. Members of powerful unions like the steel and auto workers enjoy escalator clauses in their contracts that automatically boost paychecks as inflation rises. Military men and women have more than kept up with inflation because pay scales have been raised--in some cases spectacularly--to recruit and keep people in the all-volunteer services.

Like union members, retired members of the military and retired civil servants also benefit from escalator clauses. So do Social Security recipients, whose benefits have risen more than threefold since 1967 and who are exempt from having to pay income taxes on their monthly checks.

Profligate people who splurged years ago on gold jewelry, diamonds, Persian rugs, antique furniture and fine art have seen their value steadily mount, while prudent savers who put their money in bank accounts or U.S. Savings Bonds have taken a beating. Every $100 invested in U.S. Savings Bonds ten years ago is worth only $89 now.

Because their big-spending years are behind them, working people in their 50s and 60s often fare better than Americans in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Take the case of Police Sergeant James Roscoe, 55, a 26-year veteran of the force in Cambridge, Mass. Statistically, Roscoe has fallen behind: his income has risen only from $16,000 to $21,000 since 1967, and. after taxes it shows hardly any gain. But Roscoe and his family no longer need to spend money on some of the most rapidly rising items in the CPI. In 1957, for instance, he bought his two-family home for $15,000. Today, the mortgage has been paid off, and three of the family's five children have grown up and moved out. When he retires in five years, he and his wife could move to a Sunbelt state, where living costs are lower than in New England. If so, the sale of his home should fetch at least $50,000, or more than enough to buy a comfortable South Florida condominium. Says Roscoe: "I was in a hell of a lot worse shape back in 1967 than I am now. In fact, I'm much better off."

Not far from the Roscoes live M.I.T. Engineering Professor Lawrence Evans, 44, and his wife Beverley, who works part time as a nurse. Their income is some $60,000. Yet life seems to be a constant struggle of trying to meet the bills. About $6,000 a year goes to keeping the Evans children, aged eight and 13, in private school. Then come mortgage payments on a vacation cottage on Martha's Vineyard that was bought five years ago as an investment property. The Evanses feel that the private school and the second home are in one form or another investments in future growth and security for themselves and their children. But their spending habits also reflect that they--unlike the older, Depression-bred Roscoes --grew up in affluent times. Thus they feel that they have to spend more, and they are badly set back by inflation.

Families like the Roscoes and the Evanses are found in every community in the country. In Hohokus, N.J., Rose and Fred Wagner seem easy marks for inflation. Both in their 60s and nearing retirement, they own a neighborhood bakery. The cost of sending their two daughters through college is almost behind them now that the younger will be graduating from Cornell in the spring. Then too, the bakery business is booming. With more and more women taking jobs to help close gaps in family budgets, the housewife's time in the kitchen is growing scarcer. Bringing home a bag of fresh-baked pastries is a relatively inexpensive second-best expression of homemaker instincts. Says Mrs. Wagner: "We just had the best Christmas in 20 years. There wasn't a crumb left in the shop the Saturday before Christmas."

Yet for all their varied experiences with inflation, Americans everywhere share a deepening sense of being threatened. Says Dorothy Danielson, 63, who lives with her husband, a retired Lutheran minister, in Largo, Fla.: "I feel fortunate that we have a roof over our heads, but if inflation continues to rise, it's going to be a real problem. You never know when a great emergency is going to come up, and our savings wouldn't be worth a hill of beans." To supplement the couple's church pension and Social Security, she cleans house for a neighbor while her husband Carl does handyman jobs at $4.50 an hour. "Without the extra money it would be awful slim pickings," he says.

In Richgrove, Calif., Steve and Karen Pavich have a combined income of some $23,000 as managers of two family farms totaling nearly 2,000 acres; they also feel in jeopardy. Four years ago, the Paviches bought their John Deere farm tractor for $24,000; eventually it must be replaced. The price for a new one has climbed to $32,000, even though the current model is basically the same vehicle. Says Karen, 24, who would like to have children but feels unable now to afford them: "You want to hear about inflation? I'll tell you about inflation. There's petrochemical inflation, energy inflation, machinery and steel inflation, wage inflation, and all of it comes down on the farmer. It just corks me off. It seems like we're always having to work harder and harder just to stay where we are."

Marriage Counselor Gloria Pineles of Rego Park, N.Y., finds that inflation is increasingly endangering family stability. Says she: "People are accustomed to living a certain lifestyle, and all of a sudden they find that they cannot take an annual vacation or send their second child to college. This leads to resentment and frustration. Family finances become clouded in secrecy, and neither spouse has a good understanding of where the paycheck is going."

It is the frustration and resentment caused by inflation that presents the gravest social peril. In that sense everyone--rich and poor, urban and rural, blue collar and white--loses if people give up believing that inflation can be checked. Americans have accepted inequalities of income in their free economic system because they felt confident of having a fair opportunity to rise and prosper in the future. If they conclude that inflation continues to rob them of that chance, they may begin to question the system. Says Arthur Garcia, 43, who supports a wife and five children on a $19,000 wage as a worker in U.S. Steel's South Chicago mill: "You really want to revolt, but what can you do? I keep waiting for a miracle--for some guy who isn't born yet--and when he comes we'll follow him like he was John the Baptist." That is a chilling thought, and it only emphasizes the urgency of defeating the inflation that is deflating the dreams of so many Americans.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.