Spending on experiences is not proof that liberal individualism has won

A gap between politics and behaviour

The Financial Times reported this week that the lifestyle once derided as that of a "citizen of nowhere" has quietly prevailed in daily life, even as politics moved the other way. The evidence it cites is economic and demographic: hotel operators describe unusually resilient demand, spending on recreational services keeps growing, Britain's household savings ratio has returned to its 2016 level, church attendance is below pre-pandemic levels and birth rates are falling.

The gap is real, but the interpretation matters more than the observation. Political movements that stress nation, locality and family have gained ground across Europe and the United States. Their voters, however, are not obliged to change how they spend a Saturday. A person can back a party that promises tighter borders and still book a weekend abroad, and nothing in the data says otherwise.

That is the first point worth holding on to. Elections measure what people want from the state. Consumption and fertility measure what people do with their own money and time. The two can diverge for a long while without either being false.

What behaviour can and cannot reveal

The stronger claim is that behaviour reveals preference, so low birth rates mean people rank children below other goods. That is plausible in aggregate, and it fits the pattern that fertility has fallen across most wealthy and middle-income countries regardless of their political culture. A single national government, ideology or economic model cannot easily explain a trend that broad.

But revealed preference is only clean when the choice is free. Many of the decisions in question are not. Where house prices put property out of reach, saving towards it offers a poor return, and spending on travel, food and entertainment becomes a rational substitute rather than a philosophical one. Similarly, a person can value children above a restaurant meal and still have none, because children require a stable home and a partner, while a restaurant requires only a booking.

There is also a question about what "experience" means. Time spent with friends, family and community is arguably the opposite of atomisation. A weekend away with children and a solo tasting menu both show up as recreational spending, yet they describe different lives. Aggregate figures cannot separate them, so claims about a rootless society drawn from those figures should be treated with caution.

The pattern also covers more than the young and the unattached. Older households with paid-off homes and time to spend are a growing part of the market for cruises, theatre, hotels and wellness services. If that group is a major driver of the boom, the story is less about a generation priced out of assets and more about demography meeting accumulated wealth.

Why it matters

For policymakers, the distinction has practical consequences. If low fertility reflects free preference, pronatalist subsidies and rhetoric will have limited effect, which is consistent with the experience of countries that have tried them. If it reflects constraints on housing, secure work and partnership formation, then the lever is structural and the political appeal to tradition is mostly beside the point.

For investors and businesses, the durability of experience spending is the question. Resilience so far has come despite inflation and geopolitical risk, which suggests a habit rather than a passing mood. A habit can still be broken by a sharp rise in unemployment, a fall in asset prices that erodes older households' confidence, or higher costs of travel.

There is a third reading that the evidence cannot exclude. Some people may be embracing nationalist or family-centred politics precisely because their private lives have become more individual and less anchored, using the politics as a cushion. Others may simply be lagging, with deeper shifts still to arrive. The available data does not settle which, and anyone claiming certainty is going beyond it.

What to watch next

Three indicators will say more than the mood of any column. The first is whether savings ratios and household debt move as interest rates and living costs change; a sustained rise would suggest caution, not a change of values. The second is fertility among people who have secure housing and partners, since a fall there would support the free-preference view, while stability would point to constraints. The third is the composition of recreational spending between older and younger households, and between solo and family consumption.

Until then, the safest conclusion is a modest one. The politics of the past decade did not reverse how many people live, and that is worth noting. It does not follow that people are content with that life, or that they would choose it again if the costs of the alternatives were lower.