Education absorbs almost a quarter of expenditures for Albanian new families, even more than being fed and sheltered. During 2017, according to the Household Expenditure Statistics published by INSTAT in the Household Budget Survey, households spent in education 25.1% of their income.
Compared to the previous year, spending on education increased by 2.3 times for younger households. In 2016, according to INSTAT education accounted for 10.5% of total expenditure. Increasing spending on education has come as fees rise to almost 15%. The fees for the bachelor's degree program at the faculty of economics in 2016 were at around 30 thousand leks, became 35 thousand leks.
While spending on education has increased, younger households reduced spending for food and shelter, which in the structure of their spending occupied the main weight. According to data from the Institute of Statistics, in 2016 the share of food expenditures was 31.3%, while in 2017 this weight would drop to 22.5%
New families have also reduced spending on housing. Housing expenses in 2017 accounted for 21.5% of total spending, from 24.8% in 2016. In total, these three groups - education, housing and food - have a total weight in the structure of their spending by 69%.
As they have reduced the spending on clothing and footwear, the new Albanian families have increased spending on restaurants and hotels. About 9.5% of the total expenditure in 2017 went to restaurants and hotels, from 6.4% a year earlier. As for clothing and footwear, in 2017 the share of spending on them fell by almost 1 percentage point compared to the previous year, to 4.8% of total spending.
Entertainment expenditures have been down slightly in 2017 compared to the previous year. Family with head households up to 24 years spent on entertainment 3.5% of their income. During 2017, they also lowered communication costs, where according to INSTAT, communication costs had a weight of 2.7% from 3.1% a year earlier.