There are more but smaller households compared to five years ago, according to the findings of a survey announced by the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) on Friday.
The number of households rose by 5.6 percent to 191,273 in the 2017/18 survey period from the previous period in 2012/2013.
The survey is held every five years.
The number of households living in subsidised home-ownership scheme units (23,109) and social housing units (12,637) rose by 22.4 percent and 96.2 percent respectively.
The respective proportions of households living in these two types of units provided by the government rose by 1.7 percentage points and 3.0 percentage points to 12.1 percent and 6.6 percent.
The number of households living in units provided by the private property market dipped by 0.1 percent to 155,527, with their proportion in total households falling by 4.7 percentage points to 81.3 percent.
Macau’s average household size dipped from 3.05 to 3.04 persons. Elderly households surged by 65.8 percent to 18,223.
There were 29,570 households with no members engaging in economic activities, accounting for 15.5 percent of the total, up by 4.1 percentage points from the previous survey.
In 2017/18, monthly consumption expenditure of all households amounted to 6.79 billion patacas, up by 28.5 percent in real terms. The average monthly consumption expenditure was 35,488 patacas per household, a 3.6 percent growth.
Households’ monthly expenditure on online consumption totalled 141 million patacas, or 2.1 percent of total household consumption expenditure, an upsurge of 361.2 percent from 2012/13.
Households’ total monthly income reached 10.62 billion patacas, up by 20.5 percent. The average monthly income stood at 55,497 patacas per household, up by 14.1 percent.
Employment earnings were the primary source of household income, accounting for 72.4 percent of the total, while monetary transfer receipts (such as government welfare benefits and subsidies) and property earnings (such as rental and interest receipts) accounted for 14.1 percent and 13.5 percent respectively.
The proportion of employment income for households living in social housing units fell by 13.4 percent to 51.3 percent, whereas the share of monetary transfer receipts rose by 13.2 percentage points to 48.3 percent.
Households’ average monthly income increased by 14.1 percent, while the average monthly household consumption expenditure grew by 3.6 percent, resulting in a decrease of 6.5 percentage points in the share of household consumption expenditure to income, down from 70.4 percent to 63.9 percent.(Macaunews)
