Australian household economy values food, fun

How much of our money is spent on recreation and refreshment? More than you might expect, as Commonwealth Bank has found.

Australian households are being described as “comfortable” with a willingness to spend on food and fun, at least based on recent research released by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).

The research comes out of CBA’s Household Satisfaction Index which measures what households are spending on in Australia due to households being “the dominant part of the Australian economy”.

CBA’s research reveals that households provide 70 per cent of all income tax revenue and 73 per cent of national income, influencing economic policy considerably as they’re a source of stability.

According to the bank, 17 per cent of household money is spent on recreational activities while just over 20 per cent is spent on food, informing that entertainment and engagement are just as important as sustenance.

In fact, it’s not just fun and food, but also the things you might not expect, with the average Aussie household attributing 2.9 per cent of its total spending on alcohol, higher than the 2.8 per cent on education and close to the 3.3 per cent on communications services and 3.5 per cent on fuel and power.

CBA has also tracked that households account for a large majority of Australian debt, which the Commonwealth Bank says is at a “record high relative to income and the size of the economy”, though of perhaps interesting news is that these amounts of debt don’t appear to be threatening economic activity, at least for the moment.

This might be attributed to the level of satisfaction Australians have in determining quality of life, with CBA research pointing to a “glass half full” approach for Australian households. Work-life balance is a big factor in this, but so are financial factors such as wealth, income, housing, and jobs.

“Household satisfaction depends on much more than the traditional hard-edged economic and financial data. A range of other factors such as education, the environment and work-life balance are just as important,” said CBA Chief Economist Michael Blythe.

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