CHANGES IN THE HOUSEHOLDS CONSUMPTION PATTERNS IN ROMANIA AND THE EU COUNTRIES - HOW MUCH IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS? [1]

The financial crisis more intensely felt in Romania since the second half of 2008, has triggered economic phenomena and processes that affected the economic progress and the living standard of population. The daily lifestyle during the crisis was limited to households concern to satisfy at least the current needs – for food and non-food products - typical for subsistence consumption. The paper presents a brief analysis of the evolution of consumption expenditure of households (the main manifestation of consumption) in the European Union and Romania in 2003-2011, also attempting to reveal the adjustments induced by the crisis. The results show that the final total consumption expenditure of population grew slowly but continuously in 2003-2011 in the EU (with a decrease in 2009 and 2010, during the crisis), but Romania has registered a significant increase in total consumption expenditure in relation to the European average, similar to that recorded by other new Member States. However, the per capita evels and the shares of different categories of consumption expenditure place Romania on the lowest or second lowest position in the EU, indicating the presence of a rather "quasi-subsistence consumption" behavior, characteristic of countries with lower development level and very sensitive to the adverse effects of economic crises and recessions.