Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Consumer spending over last century

Here's a fascinating graphic of how consumer spending has changed over the past century. We spend less on food (as a percentage) and much more on transportation.

5 comments:

Jay Livingston said...

Or does our extended lifespan explain why we're spending more on health care?

David Weakliem said...

Actually, if the labels are correct, spending on health care has remained about the same, but spending on transportation has grown a lot. (It has transport as the fourth category and health care as the fifth, counting from the bottom). That doesn't seem right--I wonder if they mixed up the labels.

Brad Wright said...

Interesting, David. I would have thought that health care is a lot more expensive now, relatively.

David Weakliem said...

I looked at the BLS report they cite as the source, and it says that people spent 5.2% of their income on health care in 1901, and 5.9% in 2002-3. I think the reason that there's so little change is that consumer spending would just include out-of-pocket expenses, so it wouldn't include spending through government and employer-based insurance, which has increased a lot.

Transportation wasn't a separate category in 1901 (the graph misleadingly showed it as zero), but is grew from 8.3% in 1934-6 to over 19% in 2002-3. That's a surprise to me--I wouldn't have guessed transportation took anywhere near that share of spending.

Brad Wright said...

Interesting, David, I wouldn't have guessed it. Thanks for looking it up.