Housing and supplies are the main expense of Spanish households. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), rent payments (mortgages are not included) and water, electricity and gas bills account for more than 30% of each family’s spending. The purchase of food is the second major expense, with 14% of the total, while transportation (12.5%), and restaurants (10%) complete the four major household expenses. However, there are large differences between the expenditures made by the richest households and the poorest households.
Quantitatively, the richest households spent more than 52,033 euros in 2017, while households in the lowest income quintile spent almost four times less on consumption: 13,734 euros. On average, Spanish households spent 29,188 euros in the 2017 financial year. But, in addition to the quantitative differences, there is also disparity in the distribution of family budgets.
For example, while for the lowest income quintile (20% of households with the lowest income), housing takes almost 40% of income, for those with the highest income it is 15 points less. Given that the Family Budget Survey does not include mortgages and does include rentals, it could be that the explanation for this difference is the greater tendency of higher-income households to own a home.
In addition, a large part of the household supplies (electricity, gas, water) are sometimes similar for families regardless of their income level, which forces the poor to make a higher outlay in relative terms.
The richest families only dedicate a third of their spending to housing. They also spend twice as much on leisure
Families in the lowest income quintile also spend more of their income on food than the rich. Specifically, lower-income families spend 20% of their budget on food and non-alcoholic beverages, compared to 10% of higher-income households.
In this way, the expenses that can be considered “mandatory” for any family (housing and its supplies and food) account for 60% of the budget of the poorest households, while for the richest households it only represents 35%. of their spending, which frees almost two thirds of their budget for other issues, such as clothing or furniture and household items, to which they dedicate a greater percentage of their spending.
For example, the richest households double the spending on restaurants and entertainment of the poor. Restaurants and hotels take 12% of the budget of families with the highest income, more than double that of households in the lowest quintile (5.9%). In the case of leisure, rich households spend more than 6% of their budget for the 3% of families with the lowest income.
Also in transport, the proportion of spending by rich households doubles that of the poorest (16.6% compared to 7.1%), which points to the greater use of the private vehicle by the former, which requires an outlay that Those with less income do not do so, as they would have a greater use of public transport, which is cheaper. This same circumstance is also observed in two other issues: health and education.
The first represents 2.25% of the budget of the poorest families, compared to 3.66% of the households in the quintile with the highest income. For its part, education represents 0.6% of the family budget of households with the lowest income, almost three times less than that spent by families with higher incomes (1.7%). Both questions indicate the greater possibilities of spending on health and private education for rich families, compared to the use of public services by families with less income.
On the opposite side are alcoholic beverages and tobacco, to which households with the lowest income allocate a greater budget (2.4%, compared to 1.4% of families in the highest quintile). Families with less income also spend more on communications than those with higher income, probably because mobile and fixed telephony expenses are similar for all households, which implies a greater proportional effort in the case of lower-income consumer units. .
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