Consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage in Canada in 2023
Initial analysis of broad household spending data, including an estimate of arts spending
What were you doing 15 years ago? I was writing my previous analysis of consumer spending on culture, using 2008 data. Today’s article is, sort of, an update to that report. Unfortunately, the two articles are not directly comparable, because the survey questionnaire has changed significantly since 2008.
Why did I decide to revisit a 15-year-old report? Because, since the pandemic, I’ve thought that there has been a dearth of in-depth, nationwide data on cultural participation. (I don’t even have a section for “arts participation” on my Substack page, which was started in 2022.) I know, I know: there have been surveys. But none have had the extensive sample size to allow for rich national analysis and detailed provincial findings.
Hence today’s article, which takes a different angle at cultural participation, by examining Canadian households’ spending on cultural goods and services in 2023. The article has its limits, given the available data from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending. Like a lot of data on culture, the context regarding today’s dataset is tricky. Please do not skip the Survey methods or Survey exclusions and limitations sections!
Given the exclusions and limitations, I would consider the resulting analysis to be a reasonable approximation of consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage, given what is available in the dataset. The good news is that the estimates of spending on cultural items should be as accurate as estimates for any other items in the survey.
Today’s article highlights nationwide data on:
Average spending on the arts, culture, and heritage per household
Total consumer spending on the arts, culture, and heritage (which equals the average spending per household reported in the survey, multiplied by the number of households in 2023)
Comparisons with consumer spending on other items
Spending on cultural goods and services by category and by item
For future articles, I will look into the reliability and feasibility of analyses of:
Changes in cultural spending since 2019 (the year in which the survey instrument was thoroughly revised, rendering it not-really-comparable to prior surveys)
Provincial data
Survey methods
The Survey of Household Spending (SHS) is a bi-annual questionnaire on the spending habits of individual Canadians. Statistics Canada highlights its survey methods:
“The sample for the 2023 SHS consists of 36,320 households across the 10 provinces and 2,321 households in the 3 territorial capitals.”
Since 2010, “the SHS data have been collected using both a questionnaire and an expenditure diary. The questionnaire is generally used to collect expenditures for more expensive and less frequently purchased goods and services. The diary is used to collect expenditures for smaller, less valuable items and those purchased more frequently. These expenditures may be more difficult to recall.”
The questionnaire portion was self-completed via electronic means, while the “diary was sent to respondents by mail”.
The dataset for 2023 was released in May of 2025.
The survey questionnaire was thoroughly redesigned in 2019, which means that much of the data since then is not comparable to prior years.
What is included in cultural spending?
After a close examination of hundreds of line items available in the SHS dataset, I retained 19 items as “cultural spending” and grouped them into five categories:
Cultural events
Home entertainment
Photographic services and equipment
Reading material
Visual arts and supplies
A list of the 19 individual items (and spending on each) is provided in bullet points in the section entitled “Spending details in each category”.
Survey exclusions and limitations
Because it is a broad survey of overall spending habits, the Survey of Household Spending does not provide information about some types of cultural spending. For example:
Musical instruments, parts, and accessories
Arts courses
Tuition fees for arts-related post-secondary programs
Textbooks (which the survey includes with other school supplies)
In addition, only a rough estimate of spending on live performing arts can be gleaned from the dataset. Live performing arts are grouped in a line item that includes live sports. I estimated each of these two components to provide a rough estimate of spending on live performances. (Here’s how: I used a 52% portion for the performing arts, based on the most recent revenue estimates from another dataset, Supply and Use Tables. However, these revenue estimates have fluctuated over time, and a 52% portion may be a fairly conservative estimate for live performances.)
The household spending dataset does not delve into the details of cultural items that are included in the survey. Here are a few examples of breakdowns I would have liked to see:
Spending on live performing arts by type of performance
Spending on books into physical and e-books, into fiction and non-fiction categories, and with separate categories for Canadian-authored books and Canadian-published books
“Works of art” and “carvings” separate from “other decorative ware”
The dataset examines cultural spending, not all types of participation in cultural activities. Free cultural activities, by definition, are excluded from the data source, Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending.
Consumer spending on culture in 2023
Canadians spent an average of $1,623 per household on cultural goods and services in 2023, for a total of $27 billion. This represents 2.1% of total consumer spending in the country (after taxes, pension contributions, and gifts are excluded).
Comparisons with consumer spending on other items
Today’s first graph compares consumer spending on culture with other consumer purchases. The $27.0 billion in consumer spending on culture is:
More than three and a half times larger than consumer spending on garden supplies and services ($7.5 billion)
Two and a half times larger than spending on computer equipment and supplies ($10.9 billion)
78% larger than spending on travel accommodations (e.g., hotels, motels, short-term rentals) ($15.1 billion)
56% larger than spending on furniture ($17.4 billion)
10% lower than spending on tobacco products, alcoholic beverages, and cannabis for non-medicinal purposes ($30.1 billion)
41% lower than spending on clothing and accessories for all age groups ($45.6 billion)
