The table illustrates the proportion of income that adults and children in the UK spent on four common items — food, electronic equipment, music, and videos — in 1998. The data is further broken down by gender for adults and children.
Overall, it is clear that food took up the largest share of spending for adults, especially women, while children spent a significant portion of their income on music and electronic equipment. Spending on videos was the smallest proportion for most groups.
Looking at adults, they spent 25% of their income on food, which was the highest among the four items. Women allocated a much larger percentage (39%) to food compared to men (14%). In contrast, men spent more on electronic equipment (10%) than women (1%). Both men and women spent equally on music at 5%, but spending on videos was very low, at 2% for men and 0.5% for women
Children’s spending patterns were quite different. They spent only 10% of their income on food but a substantial amount on music (39%) and electronic equipment (23%). When divided by gender, boys spent 18% on electronic equipment and 38% on music, whereas girls spent 5% on electronic equipment and 40% on music. Spending on videos was notably higher among boys (18%) and girls (17%) compared to adults.