The bar chart illustrates how much money students spent in the United Kingdom between 1996 and 1999. Overall, while most essential expenditures saw declining percentages over the three-year period, the opposite is true for non-essential ones. In addition, UK students paid the largest sum of money for entertainment purposes in both of the years surveyed.
There was a 3% decrease in UK students’ spending on accommodation, which declined slightly from 23% to 20% between 1996 and 1999. UK students’ expenditure for bills, food, household goods was 20% in 1996 and then witnessed a steady fall of 2% in the given period. Similarly, a moderate drop from 10% to 7% was recorded in course expenditure. In 1996, UK students spent around 1% on children, which was subsequently not represented in 1999.
By contrast, entertainment was spent the largest amount of money with 26% of total spending, which then rose sharply to 31% in 1999. The period from 1996 to 1999 saw a slight growth between 13% to 16% in expenditure on non-essential items and credit payments. The figure for essential travel went up by 3%, whereas that for non-essential travel went down by 1% throughout the period.