The bar chart gives information about the way families in a particular country spent their income in a typical week in 1968 and 2018.
Overall, while food accounted for the largest part of families’ total expenses in 1968, this was the case for leisure in 2018. Notably, whereas leisure, transport, and housing saw an increase, all other categories except for household goods experienced a decline between the two years in question.
Looking first at the categories that saw a rise, leisure, despite having a noticeably small figure in the former year, had increased more than twofold by 2018 (from under 10% to well over 20%). Another category with a similar change was housing, which went up from 10% to roughly 19%. Families’ spending on transport also rose markedly from around 7% to nearly 15%.
In contrast, virtually all other categories underwent a fall to some extent. Although families expended the largest part of their income on food in 1968, it had halved by the latter year, falling from 35% to 17%. Similarly, clothing and footwear saw a twofold decline, from 10% in 1968 to 5% in 2018. Falling trends were also seen in fuel and power as well as personal goods since they went down from about 6% and 8%, respectively, to 4%. Notably, the only category that did not see any change was household products, remaining the same at under 10% in both of the years.