Less food, more services: this is how spending changes

In the long term the structure of consumption of Italian families has profoundly transformedmoving from a model focused on essential needs to one in which incompressible services and expenses prevail. This is what emerges from the Istat survey “Consumption changes together with the country”, which reconstructs the evolution of family spending from the Unification to today.

After the Second World War, spending was still heavily unbalanced on primary goods

In 1953, 52.4% of the family budget was allocated to foodstuffs, drinks and tobacco, while almost 80% is absorbed by food, clothing and housing. Today the share for food and tobacco has fallen to 20.9%, with a drop of over 30 percentage points, against a growth in the components linked to other goods and especially services. Already in the first decade of the economic boom, a rapid change in the composition of spending was observed.

Private transport and durable goods

Between 1953 and 1963 real spending increases by 30.6% and the share allocated to private means of transport goes from 0.8% to 1.8%, reaching 2.9% today. At the same time, the diffusion of durable goods: in 1963 1.2% of spending was allocated to household appliances and 0.6% to radios and televisions, while in 1966 60% of families owned a television and refrigerator and 32% a washing machine.

The energy shocks of the 1970s directly affected the structure of consumption

The share of spending on fuel it went from 1.5% in 1963 to 4.6% in 1974, up to 8.7% in 1980, and then reduced to the current 4.7%. In the same period, public policies changed health spending: between 1978 and 1980, with the introduction of the National Health Service, the share allocated to health fell from 3.9% to 1.3%, and then rose again in the following years to around 4%. A structural transformation has been consolidated since the 1980s.

The fee for clothing and footwear it is reduced from 10.4% in 1980 to 3.7% in 2024, while that for tobacco is more than halved. At the same time, spending on… housing, water, energy and fuels, which becomes the main budget item: from 15.9% in 1980 to 26.9% in 2000, up to 35.7% in 2024, with a peak of 38.8% in 2020.

Over the last thirty years, the centrality of services has emerged

The share of expenditure allocated to them reaches approximately 50% of the monthly budget, a level equivalent to that which was absorbed by food in the 1950s. In the same period, the digital revolution changes consumption patterns: in 2024, 96.5% of families own at least one mobile phone, while the share of those with a landline phone drops to 36.4%, compared to 92.3% in 1997. Territorial differences remain.

In the 1950s, families in the South spent 12% less than the national average; today the gap has risen to 20%. Furthermore, in the South, over 25% of spending is still allocated to food, drinks and tobacco, compared to around 19% in the Centre-North. In the European comparison, the most recent data available (2020) indicate that in Italy housing, food and transport absorb over two thirds of total expenditure, compared to 63% in Spain and 56% in France and Germany, where the share allocated to recreation, culture and services is higher.