European Purchasing Power Climbs

Europeans have an average of €13,937 per person available for spending and saving in 2017. This is one of the many results of GfK’s newly released study, “GfK Purchasing Power Europe 2017“.

The available net income among the researched 42 countries varies enormously: Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Iceland have the highest average purchasing power, while Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine have the lowest.

In 2017, Europeans have a total of around €9.4 trillion for spending on food, accommodation, living expenses, services, energy costs, private retirement savings, insurance, vacation, mobility and other consumer purchases. This corresponds to an average per-capita purchasing power of €13,937, which indicates moderate growth of 1.9 percent and a significant improvement over last year’s figures. But some countries deviate from this average value. For example, Iceland has robust, above-average growth of more than 37 percent, while countries such as Liechtenstein and Switzerland have stagnating growth rates.

Top 10 European countries

As the rankings make clear, the amount available to consumers for purchases varies starkly from country to country. Far surpassing the other countries in the rankings, Liechtenstein has a per-capita purchasing power of €63,267, which is more than 350 percent above the European average. With €42,142 per person, Switzerland comes in at second place. Inhabitants of this country thus have more than three times what is available to the average European. The other countries in the rankings also have above-average purchasing power that exceeds the European average by 1.5 times or more.

Seventeen countries have above-average purchasing power, including Spain, which just barely exceeds the average with €14,080 per person. By contrast, 25 countries have below average per-capita purchasing power. In the least affluent countries considered by the study, inhabitants have just €949 per person and less than seven percent of the European average. For example, the Ukraine has just one sixty-sixth of the per-capita purchasing power available to inhabitants of Liechtenstein.

Some reshuffling has occurred among the top-ten countries compared to last year, primarily due to exchange rate disparities. Luxembourg and Norway fell one slot apiece to fourth and fifth place, while Iceland moved two slots higher to third place. Germany and Sweden switched places in the rankings, with Germany pulling ahead to eighth place.