Band 9: The charts below show the changes in ownership of electrical appliances and amount of time spent doing housework in households in one country between 1920 and 2019.

The first line graph shows the percentage of households that own three different types of electrical appliance over a period of one hundred years and the second shows the number of hours spent per week on household chores during that same period. Overall, ownership of those three appliances increased and the amount of time spent on chores decreased.

In 1920, which was the first year recorded, almost no one owned a refrigerator, whilst a third of people had a vacuum cleaner and four out of ten had a washing machine. This changed drastically over the next decades, with almost every household possessing a fridge by 1980. Indeed, by 1960 it had already surpassed the other two appliances to become the most commonly owned of the three. In the final year, 2019, every household had both a fridge and vacuum, but washing machines, which had been the most common in 1920, were now the least common with just three quarters of households owning one.

During this time frame, the number of hours spent on chores dropped from fifty hours per week to about ten, with a steep decline in the first few decades, followed by a slower fall from 1980 onwards.