Europeans spend 14,739 euros per person in 2019 | Progresiv
Europeans have an average of 14,739 euros per person available for spending and saving in 2019. But disposable net income among the 42 studied countries varies significantly: Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Luxembourg have the highest average purchasing power, while Moldova, Kosovo and Ukraine have the lowest. These are some of the results of the newly released study “GfK Purchasing Power Europe 2019”. Europeans have just under 10 trillion euros at their disposal in 2019. Per capita purchasing power grew by approximately 3.5 percent in 2019, which is significantly higher than last year’s value. This corresponds to an average per capita purchasing power of 14,739 euros. The rankings show substantial differences between the studied countries with respect to the amount available to Europeans for food, living, services, energy, private pensions, insurance, vacation, mobility and consumer purchases. Liechtenstein takes first place again with a per capita purchasing power of 67,550 euros. This far exceeds the values of the other countries and is more than 4.5 times the European average. With 42,067 euros per person, Switzerland comes in at second place, as was the case last year. All other countries in the top-ten rankings also have significantly above-average per capita purchasing power. Luxembourg makes it into the top three this year with a per capita purchasing power of 35,096 euros, ousting Iceland from third to fourth place. Sweden switches places with Finland, falling from ninth to tenth place. 
Sixteen of the countries considered by the study have above-average per capita purchasing power, while twenty-six fall below the European average. Ukraine takes last place with a per capita purchasing power of 1,830 euros.
“GfK Purchasing Power Europe is an important benchmark of the economic strength of a given region, as there are major differences in per capita purchasing power both within and between European countries,” explains Simone Baecker-Neuchl, expert in GfK´s Geomarketing solution area. “It’s therefore crucial that we calculate our international data using consistent quality standards. This makes it possible for companies from all industries to carry out meaningful comparisons between these countries and identify the European regions with the highest purchasing power. These insights offer indispensable support for business decisions related to international location planning and evaluation as well as outside sales management and marketing.”
Below is a more detailed evaluation of the distribution of purchasing power in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A comparison of these countries offers insights into the regional distribution of spending potential.
Netherlands presents a balanced distribution of purchasing power with an average per capita purchasing power of 20,416 euros. France has an average per capita purchasing power of 20,306 euros, which is around 38 percent higher than the European average. This puts the country in fifteenth place in the European rankings. Italy shows a pronounced north-south difference, the country having an average per capita purchasing power of 17,799 euros, putting the country around 21 percent above the European average and in sixteenth place among the 42 countries considered by GfK’s study. There are significant differences in the distribution of purchasing power between Italy’s affluent north and poorer south, all of the provinces in the top-ten rankings being located in the north of Italy.
Alone in the midfield, Spain has a 2019 per capita purchasing power of 14,636 euros, which puts it just 103 euros or almost 0.7 percent below the European average.
The Czech Republic has a per capita purchasing power of 9,959 euros, which puts it around 32 percent below the European average and in twenty-fourth place among the 42 countries in the study, with the capital city district of Prague as well as the two bordering districts of Praha-zapad and Praha-vychod leading the country’s rankings.
Sharp contrasts between rich and poor Poland’s average per capita purchasing power in 2019 is around 7,589 euros, which is a little more than half of the average European purchasing power. This puts the country in twenty-ninth place in the European rankings. There is an especially large gap between rich and poor in Poland with respect to the distribution of purchasing power in the country’s 380 districts, with Warsaw taking first place with a per capita purchasing power of 13,150 euros.
In Hungary, the purchasing power is highest around the capital city, with the country’s average per capita purchasing power being 7,416 euros, approximately half of the European average. As such, Hungary is ranked thirtieth, just below Poland.
Average per capita purchasing power of 5,881 euros ranks Romania is in thirty-second place in the European rankings. As such, Romanians have around 60 percent less than the European average. The county of Bucharest leads the rankings with an average per capita purchasing power of 10,452 euros. This equates to 78 percent more money than the rest of the country. At the other end of the rankings is the county of Vaslui, which has an average per capita purchasing power of 3,706 euros. This puts Vaslui around 37 percent below the national average and around 75 percent below the European average. (www.internationalsupermarketnews.com)
