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Actual Individual Consumption - An International Comparison

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Updated: 20 July 2021

Introduction

As part of the Quarterly National Accounts and the National Income and Expenditure publications, the CSO publishes data on Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE). A broader and more internationally comparable measure of household welfare is Actual Individual Consumption (AIC).

PCE measures:

1. Household expenditure on goods and services.
2. Consumption expenditure of Non-Profit Institutions Serving Household (NPISH).
3. General government purchases of goods and services from market producers that are supplied to households as social transfers in kind, for example, the services provided by GPs to medical card holders.

In addition to the above AIC measures:

4. General government social transfers in kind that are non-market produced, for example, primary school education expenditure.

AIC includes all items measured by PCE, but the general government purchases are not limited to being from market producers. Instead, AIC covers all individual expenditure.

Individual expenditure has the characteristic of being attributable to an individual, such as spending on health or education and contrasts with collective expenditure such as spending on defence. As such, AIC consists of the goods and services actually consumed by individuals, irrespective of whether these goods and services are purchased and paid for by households, by government, or by non-profit institutions serving households. Figure 1 Actual Individual Consumption

Actual Individual Consumption

Figure 2 shows AIC in current prices. The share of Government individual expenditure in AIC steadily increased from the beginning of the series before peaking in 2009 at 22.1%. However, the peak in 2009 has since been surpassed with the share of Government individual expenditure reaching 25.3% in 2020 as household expenditure declined reflecting the COVID-19 related economic restrictions.

	NPISH	Government	Households
1995	0.6824264359	5.8071177217	28.0159228611828
1996	0.7011264016	6.1672541926	31.0158228816849
1997	0.7774114135	6.9532446641	34.0582369865238
1998	0.5821510343	7.8850062171	38.4829432899684
1999	0.7284781852	8.9929859439	43.3024432530883
2000	0.7099654179	10.2083604058	50.1997410508769
2001	0.7574988724	12.1629565687	54.8818926170185
2002	0.9158160971	14.193887076	59.6865720001604
2003	1.0610433333	15.5581293935	63.6692071410262
2004	1.2543798391	16.9576965282	67.1328907768194
2005	1.2665422956	18.7875883412	73.0462052332412
2006	1.4467495681	20.2992611093	79.5824739040097
2007	1.6622249979	22.2648119543	87.3936345328842
2008	1.7970893515	23.5068869676	88.8133643003515
2009	1.7894546062	22.7721329389	78.3519914470577
2010	2.1384735423	21.1057786414	77.0840608524
2011	2.1186075222	21.4547369859	76.8565891768
2012	2.0389567517	21.0303561329	77.2928876504
2013	2.0152406984	20.4434088923	78.6153216069
2014	2.0321792578	21.091519313	81.3659237365
2015	1.8193150579	21.7908736697	84.6880992175
2016	1.8356985712	22.8346852045	89.3241590646
2017	1.7356169376	24.5023393148	92.1791355762001
2018	1.7381807895	25.9910825224	97.6006943838
2019	1.7775102669	28.4493479129	102.8102349709
2020	1.5660956841	31.6666832977	91.8524595558

Get the data: Eurostat

Figure 3 shows AIC and PCE at constant prices. The two series closely mirror each other and both show the different trend for the period 1995-2007 compared to the period 2008-2020.

	AIC	PCE
1995	55.0143980173455	44.822156192
1996	58.517709850316	47.9666914554
1997	62.5991400718268	51.3887442454
1998	67.698803564563	55.690351093
1999	73.9800762369241	60.9454062181
2000	81.2774419493418	67.3759118288
2001	86.0681713731694	70.6932432138
2002	90.0191954227372	73.5086474356
2003	92.6989383818925	75.5899771492
2004	96.0366108046993	78.6124044592
2005	102.747021084004	84.2761490654
2006	108.676977728524	89.7324806931
2007	115.735885330101	95.8650160622
2008	116.198926342273	96.2822881903
2009	110.490235779816	91.5460506479
2010	109.765323271413	92.2779188863
2011	108.817512899173	91.1654767587
2012	107.499806416716	90.8874296302
2013	107.63503785001	90.862743161
2014	110.614395412163	93.2476702894
2015	114.084090345055	96.2180583095
2016	119.741658334232	101.093824576
2017	122.930801589581	103.4053255015
2018	127.888348096226	107.4807007845
2019	133.0370931507	111.0543325533
2020	124.059668332709	99.504292678

Get the data: PxStat N2014

Figure 4 shows the seasonally adjusted quarterly AIC and PCE at constant prices from 2015. The impact of COVID-19 related economic restrictions can clearly be seen, particularly in Q2 2020.

	AIC	PCE
2015 Q1	28.234610009	23.775676969
2015 Q2	28.432495167	23.99244157
2015 Q3	28.683840504	24.246352205
2015 Q4	28.908218068	24.388227588
2016 Q1	29.976222062	25.384635905
2016 Q2	29.721435958	25.113774152
2016 Q3	29.787139125	25.12001652
2016 Q4	30.282861144	25.513035357
2017 Q1	30.550296211	25.754063718
2017 Q2	30.428611586	25.603435865
2017 Q3	30.817434768	25.913593479
2017 Q4	31.04258685	26.050003611
2018 Q1	31.63054911	26.674694292
2018 Q2	32.082546095	26.973081555
2018 Q3	32.128735143	26.917624173
2018 Q4	31.928632993	26.794912124
2019 Q1	33.277291509	27.829567596
2019 Q2	33.452202666	27.976593042
2019 Q3	33.240270101	27.676314902
2019 Q4	32.94987351	27.451768069
2020 Q1	31.972825209	26.457362412
2020 Q2	28.846101666	22.50348937
2020 Q3	31.661545153	25.457367672
2020 Q4	31.43588698	24.941489437
2021 Q1	29.780145529	23.461975953

Get the data: PxStat NQQ49 (PCE), Eurostat (AIC)

Figure 5 shows AIC per capita in Euro (€) for 2020.

	2020
Luxembourg	33470.1041992755
Denmark	31002.0861230313
Sweden	26607.7978122483
Finland	24573.1809287183
Netherlands	23583.2540814823
Germany	22913.5958015702
Ireland	22841.1885413015
Austria	22196.0767836295
Belgium	22066.5761765737
France	21644.9988811682
Euro Area	19567.7227694481
Italy	17825.3198511747
EU27	17586.7333838988
Cyprus	17562.964172499
Portugal	13236.2766609534
Greece	13155.7069439799
Malta	12488.4368125248
Slovenia	12298.1438177436
Czechia	10076.74534145
Lithuania	9921.65606691266
Slovakia	9688.86597397924
Estonia	9641.85959716353
Poland	8692.98436082402
Croatia	8056.22738355883
Latvia	8052.83918906522
Hungary	7745.11475787055
Romania	6537.32521323837
Bulgaria	5106.22051528005

Get the data: Eurostat (AIC), Eurostat (population)

Actual Individual Consumption – Purchasing Power Standard

AIC is particularly useful for international comparisons of household welfare as it is not influenced by the extent to which services such as health and education are provided by market producers rather than non-market producers across countries.

Due to large price level differences across countries, a simple comparison of market expenditures is not appropriate. Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) is an artificial currency unit that adjusts for price level differences, allowing meaningful cross-country volume comparisons of consumption. Aggregates expressed in PPS are derived by taking the respective economic series measured at current prices in a national currency and dividing by the respective Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

Figure 6 shows AIC per capita in PPS for 2020 and highlights that Ireland is below the EU27 average.

	2020
United States	156
Luxembourg	131
Germany	123
Denmark	121
Netherlands	117
Austria	114
Finland	114
Belgium	113
Sweden	111
United Kingdom	110
France	109
Euro Area	105
EU27	100
Cyprus	98
Italy	97
Lithuania	96
Ireland	94
Czechia	87
Spain	87
Portugal	85
Malta	83
Poland	83
Slovenia	80
Estonia	79
Romania	79
Greece	78
Slovakia	73
Latvia	72
Hungary	69
Croatia	67
Bulgaria	61

Get the data: Eurostat

Figure 7 shows AIC per capita in PPS over the period 1995-2020. By this metric Ireland’s per capita consumption peaked in 2007. The other countries represented are those which have overtaken Ireland since 2007 in a EU28 ranking by AIC per capita in PPS, see Figure 8.

	Belgium	Cyprus	Finland	France	Germany	Ireland	Italy
1995	120	91	98	120	137	96	121
1996	119	91	98	120	135	99	119
1997	118	92	100	119	133	101	121
1998	116	93	102	119	130	106	122
1999	115	93	102	118	130	107	121
2000	119	95	102	120	126	111	121
2001	117	95	99	122	125	112	118
2002	117	95	100	121	121	113	115
2003	116	96	102	118	123	114	115
2004	114	98	105	116	122	115	113
2005	114	100	104	117	120	117	112
2006	112	101	106	115	119	118	112
2007	110	110	110	114	117	118	111
2008	110	115	113	112	116	112	111
2009	111	107	112	113	119	104	110
2010	113	105	113	113	119	103	111
2011	113	101	116	113	122	99	109
2012	115	97	117	113	124	99	106
2013	118	91	116	115	124	97	102
2014	118	91	115	114	125	96	100
2015	118	92	116	113	124	97	100
2016	116	94	115	112	124	97	100
2017	115	95	114	110	124	95	100
2018	115	96	114	109	123	94	100
2019	114	95	113	109	122	95	100
2020	113	98	114	109	123	94	97

Get the data: Eurostat

Figure 8 shows Ireland's rank over time among the 2019 EU28 countries for AIC per capita in PPS. Ireland's rank peaked at seven in 2006 and for the most recent year, 2020, Ireland's rank was 14.

	Rank
1995	12
1996	11
1997	11
1998	11
1999	11
2000	11
2001	11
2002	11
2003	10
2004	8
2005	8
2006	7
2007	7
2008	11
2009	14
2010	13
2011	13
2012	12
2013	12
2014	12
2015	12
2016	12
2017	13
2018	13
2019	13
2020	14

Get the data: Eurostat

Figure 9 shows AIC per capita in PPS for 2020. Three categories are shown: countries greater than the EU27 average, countries between 75-100% of the EU27 average and countries less than 75% of the EU27 average.

For further information see related Eurostat release on estimates for purchasing power parities for 2020.