MOST households’ spending in 2018 went to housing/rent, food and transportation, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on July 26.

Housing and rent had a 23.7 percent share in people’s overall spending last year, down from 24.7 in 2017 while food and non-alcoholic beverages and transportation had 20.3 percent (19.7 percent in 2018) and 18.3 percent (18.7 percent) shares, respectively.

The monthly average consumption expenditure of households was 2,181 Turkish Liras

($386) last year, up from the previous year’s 1,854 liras.

Household expenditure on health and educational services had the lowest share with 2.2 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, TÜİK’s Household Consumption Expenditures Survey showed.

The share spending on hotel and restaurants in total expenditure inched up to 6.5 percent in 2018 from 6.2 percent in 2017. The corresponding figure for communication spending was 3.8 percent which was slightly lower than last year’s 3.4 percent.

The share of alcohol and tobacco spending declined to 4 percent last year from 4.5 percent in 2017.

TÜİK data also showed that the highest income group spent 21.6 percent of its budget on transportation (23.9 percent in 2017) while for the lowest income group the largest spending item was housing and rent with a 31.4 percent share (31.9 percent in 2017).