SINGAPORE - Households across all income groups spent more, as they paid for higher quality and more expensive goods and services.

Expenditure for households at all income levels rose. Overall, household expenditure rose at 4.4 per cent a year on average over the five year period between 2008 and 2013.

This was higher than the 2.6 per cent a year increase recorded over the previous five years, according to the latest Household Expenditure Survey.

Spending on better quality and more expensive products and services - such as eating out more or spending more on private road transport and passenger air travel - was the main reason behind the increase in average household expenditure.

Housing, food and transport continued to make up the largest share of household expenditure.

The average monthly expenditure rose from $3,810 in five years ago to $4,720 in 2012/2013.

But it was the middle income households which saw the largest rise in expenditure at 5.5 per cent per year. Average monthly expenditure in this group rose from from $3,602 to $4,699.

This followed by the bottom fifth of households by income, whose average monthly expenditure rose by 4.5 per cent a year. They spent on average $2,231 a month in 2012/2013, up from $1,787 a month five years ago,

The figures were released on Thursday by the Department of Statistics' household expenditure survey, which is conducted once every five years. They were drawn from 11,050 households between Oct 2012 and Sept 2013.

The figures given do not account for inflation. Inflation over the same period measured 3.1 per cent a year according to the consumer price index, which looks at changes in prices of a basket of common goods and services.

Average household income rose by 5.3 per cent over the same period.