Finnish Household Consumption in Monetary and Physical Terms - Trends and Clarifications

The present report provides an overview of the development of household consumption in Finland in the 20th century. The study has been carried out in the framework of the AESOPUS study funded by the Academy of Finland. The AESOPUS study aimed to map out the stocks and flows of nitrogen and phosphorus in Finland, as well as to analyse the man made influences on those flows. For this reason special attention was paid to the consumption of foodstuffs in the VATT study. Next to an overview of the developments during the entire 20th century, various features with respect to the last decades are discussed, based on micro-data available for years in the period 1985-2001. Apart from describing the developments in consumption, the report also highlights the evolution of main driving forces behind the consumption developments. Actual estimation of consumption functions and the construction of a simulation model are treated in a separate report.