Our material possessions, however mundane or trivial, are extremely important to determining the quality of our lives. Indeed, the houses we live in, the possessions that provide our creature comforts, and what we eat and drink – which combine to create what can be called our material culture – are of more immediate concern and interest in our day-to-day existence than is our higher culture, namely, our religion, ideology, and arts. Also, our material possessions and our perceptions of them are essential elements to the formation of our values, goals, philosophy, and much of what we consider to be culture. A study of the material aspects of life is also more capable of illuminating the lives of the majority of most populations, the common people who form the backbone of the economy but about whom little is written in most historical documents.

The level or quality of our material culture can also serve as a principal measure of what we refer to as our standard of living, an abstract concept determined by the quantities of goods and services we consume and the amount of leisure we enjoy. The level of material culture, codetermined by income (flow) and wealth (stock), can also be used as an indicator or proxy for the standard of living in societies for which reliable statistics on income and wealth are not available.

Both material culture and standard of living are, in turn, major components of what we term life-style, the way of life or the patterns of how people live.