Regional Disparities in Household Consumption Expenditure in Slovakia

Abstract

Understanding regional differences in household expenditure is essential for the effective formulation of social and regional policy. The aim of this paper is to analyse regional differences in the expenditure of Slovak households based on data from the Household Budget Survey. The analysis focuses on 12 categories of expenditures according to the COICOP classification and compares them across the eight regions of Slovakia using multivariate statistical methods – MANOVA and PERMANOVA. The results show that although the Bratislava region reports the highest total expenditures, the relative structure of expenditures is similar across regions, dominated by basic needs (housing and food). The results were supplemented by the Bonferroni post-hoc test, which identified statistically significant differences between individual regions. The Bratislava region shows significantly higher expenditures compared to all other regions in the categories of housing; restaurants and hotels; postal services and telecommunications; and clothing and footwear.