Consumption of Italian families has returned to the levels of 1997. According to the latest national Istat accounts, updated at 2020 prices, final domestic spending fell by 12.3% last year. A hard blow that brings the figure back to constant prices 24 years. Pending the effect of the first reopening announced, starting from the end of April, so far the impact of the restrictions and the changes imposed by the pandemic have hit differently in the various economic sectors. The only one to close 2020 with a positive change on the previous year was food.
How spending has changed
This is the most marked decrease recorded in the final consumption of households (residents and non-residents) within the Italian territory, never recorded since the beginning of the historical series detected by the Istat survey. Tourism consumption in hotels and restaurants was most affected: here the decline in real terms was more than 40% and to find an expense value comparable to constant prices, it would be necessary to go back in time even before 1995, when the survey of ‘institute.
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All services are drastically reduced, including those related to culture and leisure or transport. On the other hand, goods (durable, semi-durable and non-durable) and furniture sold less, down by 7.5% and 6.9% respectively. In industry, it is clothing that suffers above all, for which there are no similar values in the historical series: the closest spending level dates back to the 2013 crisis, even if compared to today’s data, the gap remains 18 percent.
Furthermore, for the first time since 2015, families have reduced investment in housing by about 5.5 billion (-8.4%), but household expenses remain substantially stable (including bills and maintenance).
The estimate on the monthly expenditure
The trends are confirmed by the preliminary Istat estimate on average household spending, equal to 2,328 euros per month in 2020 (which goes from 2,500 in the north-central to 1,900 in the South), of which 468 euros in food and 893 euros for dwelling. The pandemic has changed the composition of consumption: those for food and housing have gone from representing 53.1% in 2019 to 58.4% of the total.