Recommendations For Societies With Mixed Halfling/human Races Follow. The Average Halfling Is Assumed,

Recommendations for societies with mixed halfling/human races follow. The average halfling is assumed, from demographic estimates, to weigh 30 pounds (14 kg) and stand approximately 3 feet (1 meter) tall.

All public places where people are expected to be seated need a mix of regular/small seating. Ideally, all chairs and tables will be adjustable, but this comes with cost considerations.

All doors must be accessible for people of all sizes. This presents a challenge for doorknobs and door handles, and the recommendation is a long vertical bar accessible for both, along with low "minimum force" levels for opening and closing. Problems with locking mechanisms remain, and while floor bolts are height-neutral, they're more suited to secondary locking mechanisms.

All restaurants, cafeterias, and vending machines should stock two differently sized portions. The average halfling consumes roughly a third the amount of food as a human. Because of various frictions (packaging, labor), prices are expected to be more than one third for a halfling portion. Because of this, it's best to have systems in place that allow splitting human-sized dishes, or bringing home leftovers, or making packages resealable.

Housing presents a serious problem. A single-family dwelling for a halfling family requires roughly one fifth the volume as for a single-family human dwelling, though costs do not scale down at the same rate. However, if built to halfling scale, the interior of the dwelling will only be accessible to halflings, which presents serious problems for e.g. police, firefighters, social workers, repairmen, or anyone else who might have cause to go into the interior of the home, to say nothing of friends and coworkers. Building for halfling scale is attractive for a variety of reasons, with cost being one of the biggest, but this might result in de facto segregation, and puts considerable strain on civic infrastructure and city markets due to duplication. Another social concern is that all interactions might, by default, take place inside human homes which have worse accommodations for halflings. Special note should also be made of mixed-species couples, who suffer extra burdens within the household. These problems are intractable, as some trade-off must always be made.

Tools, household goods, and clothing are naturally split into two markets. For clothing, near-complete segregation is expected. For everything else, partial segregation is expected: a halfling cannot effectively use many human tools due to differences in grip strength and grip circumference, to say nothing of brute strength. However, many consumables can suit both species, and it's expected that cost reduction efforts will inevitably result in a single offering for both in cases where that makes remotely makes sense. Purchases using refillable containers from bulk are encouraged, as each person can determine what's best to fulfill their own needs.

Due to lower costs (housing, food, clothing), halflings can in theory work for lower wages. For certain jobs, particularly those requiring physical strength, humans are more capable on average, and for others, particularly those requiring manual dexterity, halflings are more capable on average. For jobs which do not have significant differences, wage discrimination is recommended by contentious, and is an ongoing conversation.

There are a number of "segregationist forces" in society, driven by convenience, culture, and market forces. Once segregation has become, there is every expectation that it will snowball: a neighborhood which is inaccessible to humans will have businesses that cater only to halflings, and once halfling business is concentrated, any "mixed" business has less incentive to cater to halflings. Legislation can counterbalance these forces by requiring that all businesses be able to service both humans and halflings, and accommodate both human and halfling services, but this admittedly comes at enormous cost.

Overall, there are certain recommendations that are nearly costless and can be implemented as best practices immediately, and more complicated, costly reforms that will take significant political will and budgetary consideration. Beyond that, there are questions of social engineering and the level to which it is important or preferable that these things be done.