CommBank iQ’s head of innovation and analytics,Wade Tubman,said once inflation had been taken into account young people had pulled back their spending by more than 7 per cent.
“What we’re seeing now is younger people are cutting back,not just their discretionary spending,but also their essential spending,” he said.
Those 25- to 29-year-olds reduced their spending on utilities by 7 per cent,supermarkets by 4 per cent,insurance by 3 per cent and cut travel and household goods spending by 10 per cent. Their spending on health insurance also fell by 10 per cent.
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Tubman said there were roughly two groups of young people:those who had decided things such as health insurance were important,and those who decided they would drop the likes of health insurance altogether,which led to the 12 per cent fall in the proportion of young people with coverage.
“That doesn’t mean they’re not covered altogether:that could be that they’ve moved home,they’ve moved back onto their parents’ policy,” he said,suggesting a similar thing could be occurring with energy bills.
At the other end of the spectrum,older Australians increased their spending in all categories,except charities.