Disposable income shrinks twice as fast as GDP

Despite the major decline in disposable incomes, Greece remains among the most expensive countries in Europe in dozens of products and services.

For instance, a kilogram of flour in Spain costs 1.03 euros, while in Greece it costs 1.25 euros. An iPhone 6s, with a capacity of 16 gb costs 789 euros in Greece against 739 euros in Germany, Portugal and Austria, 749 euros in France and 770 euros in Italy, all of them countries with a considerably higher per capita income than Greece.

While prices have started declining marginally in this country since 2013, disposable incomes started shrinking from 2008 by an average rate of 6.7 percent every year, according to figures collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): This stands nowadays at 17,448 per household, far below the OECD member-state average of 24,339 euros per year.

That means Greece ranks only 27th among the OECD’s 36 member-states in terms of people’s disposable income, way below fellow countries of the European south, such as Portugal, Spain and Italy. In practice the disposable income in Greece appears to have shrunk in the last seven years at a rate almost twice as big as the country’s economic contraction rate.