The table gives analysis of how children and adults tended to spent their money (in percentages) on four different items: food, electronic equipment, music and videos in the UK in 1998. Overall, while mature people allocated more money for groceries, young people unlike their parents had preference for entertainment items such as electronic equipment, music and videos. It is clear that many adults spent less than half of their income to these four categories while children spent almost all of it.
Adults’ overall expenditure for food was 25%. Interestingly, women spent considerably more amount of money on groceries compared to men accounting for 39% and 14%, respectively. A similar pattern showed men in electronic equipment spending 10 times more than women, with 10% and 1 % respectively. However, other items: music and videos did not show great variations between both genders.
It is clear that, children spent relatively less money on food, with around 9-11%. Instead, they preferred to allocate their income to entertainment items. Children’s most preferable item was music accounting for around 39 percent for both genders. A similar scenario was seen in the category of videos, with 18% for boys and 17%. Despite this, overall proportion for videos was 12%. Electronic equipment was the second popular item among boys and was less popular among girls spending 18% and 5% of the income, respectively.