The recovery of private consumption in Spain by product type and household

This article describes the behaviour of household spending during the period 2005-2015 based on information from the Household Expenditure Survey. The recent recovery in consumption was broad-based, but breaking down the data in terms of households’ characteristics, the recovery was stronger in those in which the main breadwinner was in work than in those in which he or she was not. By product type, spending on consumer durables, which had shrunk most during the crisis, grew strongest over the two-year period from 2014 to 2015. Despite the strong upturn in consumption in the most recent years of the period considered, in general, median levels of expenditure per household have not yet recovered pre-crisis levels.