Households have different consumption patterns very much depending on income levels, cultural habits or geographical situation.
In 2019, nearly a quarter (23.5%) of household consumption expenditure was devoted to ‘Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels’, making it the EU's largest household expenditure item by far, ahead of ‘Transport’ (13.1%) and ‘Food and non-alcoholic beverages’ (13.0%), followed by ‘Restaurants and hotels’ as well as ‘Recreation and culture’ (both 8.7%).
Source dataset: nama_10_co3_p3
The remaining household spending was distributed over 'Furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance' (5.5%), 'Clothing and footwear' (4.6%), 'Health' (4.4%), 'Alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics' (4.0%), 'Communications' (2.4%), 'Education' (0.9%) and ‘Other’ (11.2%) – which together represented around a third (33.0%) of total expenditure in 2019.
A more complete overview of household final consumption expenditure, broken down by consumption purpose, is available in the Statistics Explained article and the interactive infographics:
Notes:
- This article shows the situation before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which might impact the 2020 data to be published next year.
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
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