Household Consumption And Saving Across The UK - Some New Data

28th July 2020

ONS have recently released some new experimental regional data which look at how households spend their money. These data are still in development, so users are advised to use them with caution at this time.

The data break down household final consumption by commodity for each part of the UK, as well as considering spending by foreign tourists in the UK and our own expenditures when we are tourists abroad. This is the second edition of this data that the ONS have produced, and there have been significant developments to this since the first edition, including more granular regional detail.

This analysis also lets us look at some interesting economic concepts like the savings rate and the household trade balance for the regions and nations of the UK with the rest of the UK.

This article provides a summary of these data.

We start by looking at overall per person consumption expenditure in the UK (Figure 1). Perhaps not surprisingly this is highest in London and the South East of England, but what is also striking is how little the pattern has changed between 2009 and 2018.

Scotland has fallen back a bit between these two periods, with London and the South East of England pulling away a bit.

Read the full report HERE