THE latest Household Expenditure Survey is more than just a record of cost, according to its compilers. Policy and research unit senior research analyst Gareth Jones said the document had many other uses, particularly when it came to social policy.
‘It shows for instance the increase in the amount spent on childcare, presumably because of mortgage costs which mean that both people have to go to work,’ he said.
Compiling the data had been a mammoth task, he said, and it could not have been done without engaging the help of a private company.
It had also been intensive in terms of the time that local staff had dedicated to it.
It found that the average weekly household expenditure on food away from home was nearly half of that brought into the home - £36.15 compared to £72.76. Of that £72.76, £9.03 went on fresh meat, £4.33 on fresh vegetables and £5.33 on fresh fruit.
Islanders now spend more on their mobile phones than landlines - £6.34 against £5.28.
A total of £6.52 per week is spent on a television licence and satellite subscriptions while £7.25 goes on pets.
Women spend more than three times the amount on clothes than men, £15.41 compared to £5.09.
Domestic services such as cleaning and pre-school now account for about 1.7% of total household expenditure.
The average household spends £8.69 each week on wine for the home while, when drinking outside of it, most of the £5.94 went on beer.
The largest portion of households surveyed - about 150 - said they earned between £40,000 and £49,999 per year.
Middle earners in Guernsey are better off than their Jersey and UK counterparts with annual income of £43,000 compared to £34,000 and £24,500 respectively. However, the survey does not take into account the different tax and social services regimes. The survey methodology and classification of households also needed to be considered.
RPI steering group chairman, the Very Rev. Canon Marc Trickey, said he was grateful to all the households that had taken part and to the people who had compiled it. Group members included Kate Raleigh of the Citizens Advice Bureau, Unite’s Ron Le Cras, the Women’s Institute’s Sue Farnham, Chamber of Commerce’s Barry Cash, who took over from Mike Collins, and the BWCI Group’s Steven Jones.
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