Italian families spent on average 2,755 euros per month for consumption in 2024, slightly rising (+0.6%) compared to the previous year. But behind this national average there are very wide geographical and social gods, as emerges from the Istat report. While a North-East family spends 3,032 euros, one from the South spends 2,199: a gap of 834 euros per month, equal to 37.9% more.
Food expenditure
The most significant data concerns food expenditure. Although inflation for food and soft drinks dropped to +2.5% (from +10.2% in 2023), the expense in this sector has remained stable. However, its impact on the total family shopping has risen to 19.3%.
It remains high, and substantially unchanged, the slice of Italians in difficulty: it is still about one in three family (31.1%) to declare that they had had to cut the quantity or quality of food purchases during the year, a figure just falling compared to 31.5% in 2023.
Catering and accommodation services are growing
Non -food expenditure, which represents the largest slice of the budget (80.7%, for an average of 2,222 euros), shows contrasting trends. The recovery of the catering and accommodation services are drawn, with a further +4.1% in 2024, which brings the average expenditure to 162 euros per month. Central Italy guides this growth (+7.2%), but it is the north-east that holds the highest expenditure for this item (209 euros).
In clear contrast, the expenses for “information and communication” (such as telephony and TV services), which record -2.3% compared to 2023, fall.
How much is spent in Italy
The higher expenditure levels, higher than the national average (2,755 euros), are recorded in various Italian areas:
- North-East-3,032 euros;
- Center – 2,999 euros;
- North-West-2,973 euros;
- Islands – 2,321 euros;
- South – 2,199 euros.
In 2024, the families of the North-East spend on average 834 euros more than the South (+37.9%) and 711 euros more than the islands (+30.6%). In the South, the gap with the North-East is thus returns to the pre-covid levels, after a slight settlement in 2023.
This disparity also reflects several expenditure priorities, linked to the various financial resources. The families of the South and the islands, in fact, allocate a higher share of their budget to primary needs.
Codacons: “Italians continue to cut shopping”
The increase in the prices that has also raged in 2024 hitting some key sectors led families to cut purchases also of primary goods such as food, to the point that almost one in three cores (31.1%) reduced both the quantity and the quality of the food purchased. This is stated by Codacons, commenting on the report released today by Istat.
In 2024 the expenditure for families consumption remains substantially stable compared to 2023, but if you analyze the trend of recent years, it turns out that between 2019 and 2024 the expenditure has risen to a total of only 7.6% in the face of an inflation in the same period of 18.5%. A fact that highlights how, to meet the increase in prices, the Italians have changed their habits through a narrowness to consumption.
The end of the territorial level then widens: in Bolzano, a city that marks the highest values of 2024 equal to 3,990 euros per month per family, the expenditure for consumption is almost double compared to that of Puglia (1,999 euros per month), with a difference of almost 2 thousand euros per month (+99.5%).
Istat data attest once again the very strong effect of retail prices on the expenditure of Italians. Continue Rienzi:
The long wave of the increases unfortunately continues to be felt also in 2025, with two -digit increases for some consumer food and sales products that collapse in volume.
