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not going out
Irish people have less extra cash than our European neighbours
New figures from Eurostat show Irish households to have 6% less material wealth than the European average.
NEW FIGURES FROM Europe show that Irish people remain materially worse off than the average across the region.
The findings from Eurostat measure Active Individual Consumption (AIC) per capita, and reflects a household’s material wealth in purchasing power.
These figures show Irish consumers to sit 6% below the Europe-wide average.
In comparison, our closest neighbour the UK sits at 15% above the average.
Among the other countries with more wealth to spare is Austria, which is 20% above average, Denmark, which is 15% above and Germany, which is 22% above.
The country doing the best across Europe was found to be Luxembourg – where consumers could expect to find themselves 36% better off.
Worse off
Ireland’s rating was shown to have fallen from being just 3% below the average in 2011 to 6% below in last year’s figures.
While things at home could be better – nations who faced the brunt of the economic crisis and those in eastern Europe came off worse.
Portugal, Spain and Greece all fared worse than Ireland, having been shown to be 16%, 10% and 17% worse off than the average respectively.
Bulgaria was shown to be the worse-off country across the region, being 51% below the average AIC per capita.
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