Economics: Household Spending Survey (ENG) 2025 provides significant findings on health spending and financial outlays
The ENG 2025 follows household spending day by day over a full year in 28,668 households. It revives the role of the former ENGASTO and addresses the seasonal bias of the ENIGH, which is conducted over only a few months. Its estimates exceed those of the ENIGH by 21.5%, probably because the daily record elicits more detailed and more recent reporting, and they alter the structure of spending: food falls from 37.7% to 34.9% of the monetary budget, while health rises from 3.4% to 4.7% and transfers from 2.7% to 4.3%. In health, outpatient services and medicines rise 61% and 42% above the ENIGH. This is in line with the growth of out-of-pocket spending since the 2019 centralization of purchasing and the resulting shortages, and with a likely higher INPC weight for health. The jump in transfers may reflect greater support between households amid precarious youth employment, a hypothesis that remains to be explored.
In savings, financial and capital outlays represent 17.1% of total spending, but the aggregate masks sharp differences: decile X concentrates 43% of saving, the poorer half of households 8%, and the two lowest deciles dissave. Financial inclusion is advancing, with 63.0% of adults holding a formal account, yet informal saving (58.2%) remains almost double formal saving (29.8%), and retirement provision leans on government support. Savings deposits and credit card payments follow a seasonal pattern tied to year-end expenses.
Regarding this week’s indicators, consumer inflation for September was 3.45%, up 19 basis points (bp) from 3.26% in August. The increase came from non-core inflation, which rose to 2.45%, 132 bp above August’s 1.13%. Core inflation edged down to 3.75%, 13 bp below August´s 3.95%. Non-core inflation continues to climb, driven by higher prices for fruits and vegetables (8.45% annually) and for government-authorized rates (7.79%). The non-core component could well keep rising in the coming months, pushing headline inflation higher.
Private consumption grew 1.1% year over year in seasonally adjusted terms in July. This is a slowdown from June (1.6% annually) and, above all, from the January–July cumulative growth (2.0% annually). Consumption of domestic goods rose 1.4% annually in July and 0.4% annually in January–July. Consumption of services remains weak, with growth of 0.6% annually in the month and 0.3% cumulatively in January–July, which has affected the branches that provide services to households and employment in them. Consumption of imported goods also slowed considerably, growing 1.6% annually in the month against an average of 8.1% for the year to date. This may reflect the impact of tariffs on Chinese products as the inventories accumulated in 2025 run out.
In contrast with the moderate growth in consumption, gross fixed investment (GFI) rose 6.0% year over year in July. This is its fourth increase after falling for 20 consecutive months.
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