A glimpse at the figures from Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Commission, offers a fascinating and sometimes bizarre picture of national spending patterns.
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Retirees in Macedonia seem obsessed with shoes, they spend double the European average on footwear. Retirees in Spain are clearly the continent's chicest, outlaying the largest percentage on clothing, while retired Irish, ever willing to confirm a stereotype, devote a quarter of their nutrition expenditure to alcohol.
A glimpse at the figures from Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Commission, offers a fascinating and sometimes bizarre picture of national spending patterns, as well as of the interests of statisticians.
According to the figures, no European of the 60+ generation travels by rickshaw, though why this is even included in a European survey is puzzling.
Norway is an interesting case. Retirees there spend double the average European outlay on cars. This is most likely a reflection of the nation's tough tax code, which targets cars and other luxury goods, rather than an indication that Norwegian retirees are status- conscious petrol-heads.
According to the figures, elderly Finns spend the most on books and newspapers; the French on personal care, including hairdressers and beauty products; and the Portuguese a staggering 9% of total expenditure on restaurants and hotels.
While some countries also provide categories for prostitution and narcotics, it appears no retirees are paying for these, or at least none are willing to admit it.
Within the European Union, 19 countries peg old-age pensions in some form to the development of consumer prices. Of these, Lithuania, France, Spain and Austria rely solely on price indexation to adjust future pension payments.
According to Eurostat, the consumption expenditure of people 60+ deviates to some extent from those of the average household. The most pronounced differences can be found in health and housing expenditures.
On average, elderly households in the EU spend approximately 2 percentage points (pp) more of their total expenditures on healthcare and 5.5 pp more on housing.
As inflation of housing prices rose 40% faster and medical costs twice as fast as the overall CPI in EU countries from 1996 to 2011, the actual loss of purchasing power for the older population might be higher than the official CPI suggests.
Data from the United States provide some support for the claim that retirees face a bigger loss in real purchasing power than the average household. There, the experimental CPI for the elderly (CPI-E), introduced in 1982, tries to capture the consumption expenditure of the population aged 62 and over.
As part of the approach, it places a higher weighting on healthcare and housing. ■
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