Young people aged 15 to 18 needed an average of €645 in 2021 to live “decently” at home with their parents, reveals the new STATEC report on the minimum budget covering the basic needs of adolescents. The average monthly budget for a 15-year-old boy in Luxembourg was €593, compared to €698 for the average 17-year-old girl. The calculations are from 2021, which means that the current high inflation rate would add between 33 and €39 to the bill.
As the inflation rate was 5.6% between June 2021 and March 2022, STATEC recalculated that the minimum budget for a 17-year-old girl is €737, compared to €626 for a 15-year-old boy in March 2022.
The average budget required by adolescents today is therefore €682 (compared to €645 last year).
The budget does not include the shared costs of a household, e.g. rent. It does include food, clothes, leisure, school, multimedia, and mobility.
STATEC specifies that these are “minimum budgets” that allow teenagers to “fulfil their various roles in contemporary society”, i.e. to feed themselves, participate in social life, stay connected, or attend school.
Taking into account the soaring inflation, the price of the food budget has risen to €304, which is €11 more than in September.
The budget needed for multimedia expenses, which include mobile phones, for instance, has increased “less substantially” between June 2021 and March 2022 (“only” by 1.4%) to reach €20. The same is true for the budget allocated to the purchase of clothing: it has increased by 1.7% to €66.
The monthly reference budget for a couple with two teenagers has risen to €4,961. That is an increase of 264€ in just a few months.
In 2021, the minimum budget for a family with two adults and two teenagers was €4,697 per month.
This budget includes the budget of teenagers, but also all the other needs of a family. In 2021, the cost of housing (rent, gas heating, electricity, insurance, maintenance) amounted to €1,738 per month in Luxembourg. For food, the same family spent €1,177 per month.
