Global Overview of Income and Expenditure

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key Findings

Inequality deepens across most tracked markets

Income disparity widened in nearly two-thirds of all tracked countries in 2025. Among the 10 markets with the largest increases were two in developed Western Europe. The US remained the most unequal developed economy. Six countries recorded falling real disposable income per capita, while only a handful achieved double-digit growth - underscoring a sharply divergent consumer landscape with no sign of convergence.

Social class E surpasses two billion people

The lowest-income segment exceeded two billion individuals in 2025, growing by over 24 million in a single year. Critically, value-seeking behaviour has spread beyond necessity and the bottom of the pyramid - high-income households are now also gravitating to private label and discount retailers, making cross-class frugality a structural feature of consumer markets, not a temporary response.

Asia Pacific accelerates well ahead of peers

Asia Pacific grew consumer spending faster in 2025 than the year before, accelerating to 4.5% in real terms, against a global average of under 3%. By the mid-2030s, the region is set to surpass North America as the world's largest consumer expenditure block. Even within this growth, consumers became more deliberate and value-orientated - switching brands and actively seeking higher value for money.

Health and wellness becomes a spending priority

Spending on health goods and medical services ranked second only to education in real-terms growth in 2025. More than a third of global consumers plan to increase health and wellness spending in the short term - more than any other single category. This commitment holds across income levels, making health the one category where premiumisation and volume growth are happening simultaneously.

Consumers reallocate, not reduce, their budgets

Consumer confidence fell in nearly half of all researched markets in 2025, yet households refused to simply spend less. Instead they redistributed budgets deliberately - cutting mid-market and impulse categories while protecting health, essentials and value-orientated products. This is a structural reallocation, not a cyclical pullback, and it is reshaping category hierarchies faster than trends alone would predict.