DYNAMICS OF HOUSEHOLDS CONSUMPTION IN THE ROMANIAN REGIONS [1]

The financial crisis has triggered economic phenomena and processes that affected the economic progress and the performance decline recorded by the Romanian economy in recent years have been strongly felt by the population in all regions, irrespective of their development level. The paper presents a brief analysis of the evolution of consumption expenditure of households in the regions and macro regions of Romania between 2005 and 2009, trying to reveal the possible regional differences in consumption patterns.The results reveal a possible "paradox of extremes" in terms of income and consumption expenditure - households in more developed regions seem to spend more on consumption because they have higher incomes, while households in less developed regions spend a higher proportion of their incomes because their level is lower. The highest levels of consumer spending by categories of expenditure were recorded by the Bucuresti-Ilfov region and the other more developed regions, while the lowest mostly by some less developed regions. All categories of consumption expenditure were affected by the economic downturn in 2009, after a period of relatively sustained growth since 2005.