I hope that you will forgive me if, in these concluding remarks, I shall indulge in some personal memories. Prologue: the survey forerunners Household budgets have long attracted the attention of social scientists. Since the mid-19th century many researchers have gathered detailed information on expenses and revenues of individual households.
These budget data stimulated studies on the consumption behaviour of families of farmers, manual workers and clerks, and contributed to the detection of empirical regularities such as Engel’s law. Italian economists and statisticians played a crucial role in formalising these results.