In the 1970s, American personal spending on recreation averaged $708 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is $4,660 (£3,630) a year in today’s money – the highest amount for any decade in the past 75 years. This was partly down to a very young population, with the median age being just 28.1 at the start of the decade, so there was higher demand for concerts, movie theatres and bars. It was a similar state of affairs across the Atlantic in the UK, and cinema tickets, radio licences and even containers of beer for parties were included in the UK Office for National Statistics' inflation calculations in 1977.