On the Queen's Jubilee weekend, we take a look at the changes that have taken place in her 70-year reign.
The UK was a very different place in 1952, when the country was still in the aftermath of the Second World War. It's hard to imagine still having to deal with rationing and being able to leave school at 15.
Here we take a look at some of the changes that have taken place in the last 70 years.
1950s
When the Queen came to the throne in 1952, Britain was still in the throes of rationing, which didn't end until 1954. The average wage was £468 for men, and £260 for women, although most women went back into the home after working in the war effort in the previous decade. The money went further though - the average house price was £1,891, four times the average wage, compared to eight times the average wage today.
Read more: Queen's Platinum Jubilee - events being staged to celebrate Her Majesty's 70-year reign
We were also a nation of savers, with 796 building societies for 4.7 million members. Today, there are 43 and nearly 26 million people are members.
A pint of milk was 4p, a pint of beer was more than double that at 9p and a loaf of bread was around 3p. Food was seasonal, there were no supermarkets, no frozen food or freezers to store it in and the only takeaway was from the fish and chip shop. The 1950s were the age of spam fritter, salmon sandwiches, tinned fruit with evaporated milk, with the only way to add flavour being tomato ketchup or brown sauce.
Susan and David were the most popular names for babies born in this decade.
1960s
In the swinging 60s, the average home price was £2,599, with the average wage being around the £728 mark at the start of the decade, rising to £1,114 by the end.. School leaving age was 15 and you could go straight to work as soon as you left. Barclays unveiled the first cash machine in Enfield, London, to much fanfare in 1967, with On The Buses star Reg Varney first to use it.
As the machine pre-dated bank cards, it used a complicated system of vouchers, code numbers and cheques, but it was roaring success, with 34 cash machines in the capital by 1969. Today there are three million cash points across the world. The first bank note to feature the Queen's head was the £1 note, launched in 1960 and Barclays issued the UK's first credit card in 1966. Now 69% of adults have one.
The 1960s also saw a dramatic rise in the number and spread of Indian restaurants in Britain, starting in London and the South East. The rise in immigration from the Indian subcontinent and the end of rationing saw restaurants flourishing. By the late 1960s, the first Indian and Chinese convenience foods became available: the famous Vesta curries and Vesta Chow Mein, the first taste for many Britons of ‘foreign food’. Lager also appeared around this time. A pint of milk was 4p, pint of beer 11.5p and a loaf of bread 4.5p.
Susan and David were still the most popular names!
1970s
Britain switched from shillings to 100 pennies in the pound in 1971 and more than 3.4 billion new coins were minted for 'Decimal Day' on February 15 that year. The The late 1960s saw a boom in the British economy and a dramatic rise in the standard of living. The first package holidays to Europe started at the turn of the decade and this played its part in tempting the British palate with tasty new foods and ingredients.
By the 70s, dinner parties had become very popular, featuring the new fashionable ‘foreign’ dishes like spaghetti Bolognese, often accompanied by wine, which prior to now, had only been drunk by the upper classes. Blue Nun, Chianti and Mateus Rose were the wines of choice. Chains of restaurants such as the Berni Inns began to appear in every British town and city, serving the classic 1970s favourites of melon or prawn cocktail, mixed grill or steak, and Black Forest gateau for dessert.
The average house price had jumped to £13,650 by 1979, with the average wage by the end of the decade being £4,836 for men and £2,870 for women. The Equal Pay Act of 1970 made it illegal to pay women less for the same job, and by 1971, 54% of women were in the workforce, including 50% of mothers by 1975. This was also the decade that working women could apply for mortgages in their own right, although wives were routinely taxed under their husband's tax code until the 1990s!
The most popular names for babies born in the 1970s were Sarah and Paul.
1980s
It was all change on the banking front in the 1980s, with the launch of the debit card in 1987. We were still a nation of cheque writers though, with cheque usage peaking in 1990, when four billion were written. There were more than 20,000 bank branches in 1988, compared to just 8,810 last year. The sixpence remained in circulation until 1980.
House prices had gone into five figures by the 1980s, with average prices being around £22,685. Home ownership was on the rise and renting was becoming less and less popular. Under the 1980 Housing Act, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher targeted working class voters with her ‘Right to Buy’ scheme, giving people the opportunity to buy their own council house at a heavily discounted price. Approximately one million council houses had been sold under the scheme by 1987.
From a financial perspective, the 1980s and 1990s saw a growth in mortgage lending and it became far easier to secure a mortgage. Confidence was knocked however by the recession of 1991 and the subsequent double digit interest rates. With unemployment rising, people struggled to cope with their mortgage repayments and repossession became a concern.
The average wage was £8,023 for men, £5,142.80 for women by the mid-1980s.
On the table, we were enjoying more exotic foods such as chicken Kiev, which was introduced by Marks & Spencer in the 1980s, pizza and garlic bread. And the 80s was also the decade of the kiwi fruit, which started to be exported in huge quantities in 1988. By the 80s, we were paying 20p for a pint of milk, 61p for a pint of beer and 38p for a loaf of bread.
Sarah was the most popular girl's name in this decade, with Christopher topping the charts for boys.
1990s
By the 90s, house prices took a tumble. In 1990 the average house price had reached £57,683 but by 1993 it was averaging at £51,210. The average wage was £13,760. Just under 60% of mothers were in the workplace at the start of the decade, rising to around 65% by 1999. With less time to cook, this decade saw a growth in superstores and ready meals, with snacks such as Frubes and Cheesestrings making their debut. A pint of milk had risen to 34p, beer had broken the £1 barrier at £1.32 and a loaf of bread was 55p.
Rebecca and Thomas were the names of the decade.
2000 s
By the turn of the millennium, the average worker earned £20,322 and the average house price was £125,747, making home ownership more difficult than it had been for previous generations. Tony Blair's Labour government introduced tax credits in 2003 as part of the Government's strategy to combat child poverty and to help people financially to get back to work. By this time, around 70% of mothers were in the workplace. A pint of milk was 36p, beer £2.09 and a loaf of bread 57p.
The last pre-decimal coin to be pulled was the florin, which was used alongside the 10p until 1993 and Nationwide Building Society introduced the first ever internet banking service in 1997. By 2020, 72% of adults banked online. Chip and PIN payments were introduced in 2003 to cut fraud, and gradually the need to sign for your shopping died out. Contactless cards made their debut in 2007 with a £10 limit. Today's limit is £100.
This was the decade of the Celebrity Chef, encouraging us to be more adventurous in the kitchen and items such as coconut milk and limes became staples in this decade. Online grocery shopping started to take hold after being introduced by Tesco in 1996.
Names wise, Jack was number one for boys, and Chloe for girls.
2010
By 2017, there were 70,180 cash machines in UK, which has fallen to 52,000 today as we use less cash, relying instead on contactless payments. The average wage in this decade was £26,462, with the average house price rising to £168,843. The proportion of homeowners decreased from 76.1% in 2000 to 64.9% in 2021 .
By now, we were buying 50% less tea, 56% less white bread and 32% less red meat than we were in 1992. We are also buying 23% more fresh fruit but 13% more chocolate bars. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupled to 600,000 people (or 1.16% of the population).
A pint of milk was 46p, beer £3.198 and bread £1.30.
Sophie and Joshua were the names of the decade.
2020s
As this decade gets under way, house prices are on average of £260,771, eight times the average UK wage of £31,772, making home ownership difficult without parental help, which is becoming more commonplace, with some banks offering mortgages to assist this. There are now around 12.1 million pensioners in he UK, compared to 6.8 million at the start of the Queen's reign - so it's no wonder the most common occupation today is a care worker.
Oliver and Olivia were the most popular names for boys and girls in England and Wales in 2020, with mothers aged 35 years and over tending to choose more traditional names, while younger mothers opt for more modern and shortened names.
We now pay around 51p for a pint of milk, £3.96 for a pint of beer and £1.15 for a loaf of bread.
At the start of the Queen's reign, the life expectancy for a baby boy was 66.4 years and 71.5 for a girl — today it is 79 and 82.9 respectively. In 1952, the average person never made it to state pension age, compared to today, when the average life expectancy for people nearing state pension age is 68 for men and 74 for women.
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