Food, housing, health and education already take 55% of the family budget

This is one of the main conclusions drawn from the analysis Household Budget Survey Since 2006, which shows how much Navarrese spend their money on each year. In a period that saw two serious crises with two very different periods (2008-2013 and 2020), one trend has remained consistent. Basic expenses are slowly taking up an increasing part of the family budget. If they accounted for 42% of the total in 2006, this percentage grew to 50.5% in 2011. This percentage fell by barely one point in 2016 (49.5%), and in the best economic moment of the last 15 years (2019) has continued In devouring 49% of household expenses. The disaster and the first blow of inflation forced families to allocate €18,250 for these items (55% of the total). And everything indicates that the price vortex in 2022, which launched the shopping cart and energy bill, will bring this indicator closer to 60%, the highest in recent decades.

In total, the average household budget in Navarra was €32,678, a figure that still shows the impact of restrictions imposed to control the pandemic and which was far from the chain’s historical maximum, €36,403, which was reached in 2008, just during the bursting of the housing bubble. . Then basic expenses accounted for 44.5% of the family budget.

The economic blow to Spanish society (as well as Navarre) was devastating. The decline in disposable income, as a result of lower levels of employment and salary cuts, was followed by a gradual rise, now very evident, in core products. A devastating combination of lower income social classes and a slow stimulus pump for the middle class that has less and less ability to save and generate income.

Basic expenses

Housing and food make up more than 95% of the unavoidable expenses. The former earned more than €10,791 per household in 2021, including presumed rent (which would be paid if the house was not owned), rent and other supplies. It represents exactly a third of the household budget (33%) and seven points more than it did before the 2008 crisis, when it took only a quarter (26%). The reasons are clear: purchase prices recovered after falling between 2010 and 2014, rents rose to record levels and supplies (electricity, gas and diesel) began to rise, forcing governments to step in.

Food is also much more expensive today than it was just three years ago. Dining at home accounted for 17% of spending in 2021, compared to 13.4% in 2006, when the historic INE chain began, and 14.6% in 2019, before the pandemic. Data for 2021 (5,542 euros) is still conditioned by the restrictions on the hospitality industry, but does not yet include the impact of inflation that makes many supermarket products more expensive at an average of 10% per year. This price increase appears to be here to stay, although the share of spending absorbed by food is still far from an all-time high. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the middle class was just beginning to form, spending on food made up nearly 40% of the total.

Housing and food are not the only basic expenses that are becoming more expensive. Health and education are two years old, but the fact is that spending on medicine, private schools, academies and universities is increasing. In the case of health, it has increased by more than 30% in the past decade, while spending on education has increased by about 20%. The increase coincided with the deterioration of public services. he is