among older households, and the extras are most likely to be automatic clothes washers, frost-free refrigerators, and color TV. As discussed in Chapter Three, consumers in the retail market have little choice but to buy more energy using and expensive units: wringer machines and manual defrost refrigerators are virtually not for sale. Color TVs now predominate in the stores and few consumers understand their higher operating cost.

Black households have fewer major conveniences than others do in every income class. One explanation, aside from less wealth or actual income in each class, is that homeowners predominate among those who have each kind of appliance, and blacks are not as often homeowners as whites.

Most major appliances run on electricity. Blacks, who are 11 percent of all households, used 6 percent of household electricity in 1972-73 (see Table 7-4). Aside from appliances, electricity supplies power for electric light (which is virtually universal), for cooking (in 20 percent of black households), and for electric heating (in 5 percent).