The line graph illustrates the figures for total expenditure on five different categories in an Australian city, over a forty-year period between 1970 and 2010.
Overall, the proportion of spending on food, transport and health declined albeit to varying degrees, while leisure and clothing saw a remarkable increase in their share of expenditure. Additionally, the percentage of money spent on the transport and health remained at the same point over the period.
As regards food, spending started at just under 35% in 1970, and then the percentage dipped steadily to about 15% until 2000. Following this, the figure experienced a slight rise to between 15% and 20% by the end of the period. By contrast, while the amount of leisure expenditure increased negligibly, there was a marginal fall in the proportion of clothing spending over the decade from 1970 to 1980. After which, the leisure spending percentage leveled off at approximately 15%, whereas the amount of percentage of payment on clothing went up slightly to nearly 14% in 2000. Finally, both of them (leisure and clothing spending) increased considerably over the last ten years of the period.
Looking at transport expenditure, it halved from about 10% to 5% over the forty-year period between 1970 and 2010. In addition, the percentage of money spent on health grew steadily by around 2% until 1980, and after that, health payments decreased remarkably to just under 5 % over the last thirty-year period from 1980 to 2010. Finally, despite the decrease and increase in these two categories (transport and health), both of them remained at the same position as at the beginning of the period.