Midlanders eat more, Dubliners smoke and drink more, but homes near the Border are warmer and brighter. No matter where you live, households in your area are spending a lot more in the 1990s than they were a decade ago. According to the latest Household Budget Survey, the weekly expenditure of the average family was £312 in 1995, up 40 per cent from the £223 spent weekly in 1987.
The thousands of statistics in the survey throw up some interesting regional variations. Midlanders, for example, spent a higher share of their income, at 26 per cent, on food, than those from any other region. Dubliners spent most on drink and tobacco, and those in the Border region most on fuel and light.
Nationwide, more than three-quarters of us now have telephones compared to just over half in 1987, while more Irish households than ever have vacuum cleaners, dish washers, video recorders and home computers.
But the household appliance that has really captured the imagination over the past 10 years is the microwave oven.
If you're in the microwave oven business, the chances are that you're in the top spending bracket referred to in the survey for 1994-1995 published yesterday by the Central Statistics Office.
The survey reveals that compared to 1987 when only 6.3 per cent of Irish households had the capacity to heat up the dinner in three minutes, less than a decade later 46.6 per cent of households had a microwave in the kitchen.
It also confirms that the gap between the top earners and those on the lowest incomes has widened. Households in the highest-earning bracket spent an average of £664 a week in 19941995, while the lowest spent £87.
That compared to a much narrower gap in 1987, when top earning households had an average weekly expenditure of £465, against £70 a week in low income ones. However, the CSO points out that lowest income households surveyed, with an average of 1.2 people, were smaller than those in the top bracket, with 4.3 people.
