• Employment Productivity stagnates in Spain: it is equivalent to 63% of Germany's and has only grown by 2 points since 2000
  • Growth Public investment in Spain is 55% below that of 2009 despite European funds

At the end of the second quarter of 2023, real per capita household income remained 0.7% below that of the first quarter of 2007, before the financial crisis, making the country the third worst performer in the OECD in this macroeconomic indicator, according to data published on Monday by the organisation.

While in the countries that make up this body as a whole, the per capita income of households in real terms (i.e. once the effect of inflation has been eliminated) has grown by 22.1% in the last sixteen years, Spain is one of the only three countries in which it has decreased.

Italy is the worst positioned, with a decrease of 8% in this period, followed by Austria, with a decline of 2.6% and, in third place, Spain, with a decrease of 0.7%. At the other end of the spectrum is Poland, whose real household income has grown by 60.8% since 2007; followed by Chile, with an increase of 51.7%, and Hungary, with +40.2%.

Neighbouring European countries such as France and Portugal have registered advances of 10.2% and 10.4%, respectively, in this indicator that measures the ratio between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the number of families.

As this is a quotient, the evolution of per capita income is determined both by GDP growth and by the increase in households, so that if the number of families grows at a much faster rate than the country's output, the ratio worsens.

If we look at the evolution of GDP per capita (in relation to the number of residents and not households), it has grown by 2007.3% since 8 in Spain, according to data published by the OECD, which places the country as the fifth with the lowest economic growth per capita in the last fifteen years.

Greece, Luxembourg and Italy are worse off, whose GDP per capita has decreased in this period (-16.2%, -4.4% and -1%, respectively) and also Finland, which has registered more moderate growth than ours, at 3.7%.

Growth, however, is much lower than the OECD average (16.7%) and the EU average (14.3%).

In the OECD as a whole, real per capita household income has grown by 5.2% since before the pandemic (last quarter of 2019), while GDP per capita has grown by 3.8%.

Less money to spend or save

Not only has Spain performed worse than the rest of the EU countries in terms of GDP per capita, but its own household wealth is lower than that of other European Union states.

According to Eurostat data published last Friday, households' disposable income (the income that families have, after taxes and other deductions, available to spend or save) is lower than the EU average. Specifically, in Spain it stands at 17,254 units of purchasing power per inhabitant (an artificial monetary unit used as an indicator that would be used to buy the same amount of goods and services in each country), while the EU average stands at 18,706 units.

The richest countries are Luxembourg (33,214 units), the Netherlands (25,437), Austria (25,119), Belgium (24,142), Denmark (23,244) and Germany (23,197); while the poorest are Bulgarians (9,671), Slovaks (9,826), Romanians (10,033), Hungarians (10,217) and Greeks (10,841).

  • GDP
  • Income
  • Articles Alejandra Olcese
  • Articles Alejandra Olcese