Changes in the structure of households’ consumption expenditures in selected countries of the European Union
ENThe objective of the study is to assess the differentiation of the structure of households’ consumption expenditures in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and the Western European countries (EU-15), and to determine changes in this differentiation in the years 2004-2015. This issue is crucial to establishing the economic and social cohesion in the European Union. The differentiation of the structure of expenditures was determined by employing the structure differentiation measure based on the Bray–Curtis measure. Moreover, Pearson's linear correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the correlation between the share of expenditures on a particular group of goods in households’ total consumption expenditures and real GDP per capita. The background for analysis is data collected from national sources by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat). In the years 2004-2015, the structure of households’ consumption expenditures in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia is akin to the structure of households’ consumption expenditures in the EU-15. There is, however, an evident difference in the standard of living caused by different levels of the economic development. The level of real GDP per capita had an impact on the structure of households’ consumption expenditures. However, a wide variation between countries with respect to the existing dependencies may be indicative of a considerable effect of non-income conditions of the consumption level and its patterns. Key words: structure of consumption expenditures, differentiation.
