
What Americans Buy - xxpor
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/05/149997097/what-americans-buy?sc=fb&cc=fp
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lmkg
I would like to see those bar graphs, without them being normalized to % of
income. For example, a huge difference is the fraction of income spent on
food: how much of that is food costs going down, and how much is income going
up? Non-noramalized stacked bar graphs of (inflation-adjusted) dollars would
answer that better than normalized ones.

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rauljara
I actually worked on the project on which the graphic in the Atlantic is based
(and which, in turn, this piece is based on). We came up with different
percentages because we are looking at a wider swath of spending than this
piece is. But here are our numbers for food spending (in billions of 2009
dollars):

1947: 468.7

1967: 637.1

2007: 1,230.2

You might conclude that we are spending dramatically more on food all around,
but keep in mind the population of the US in 1947 was less than half what it
is now, so those numbers aren't quite as dramatic as they appear. All
indications are that on the whole we have much better access to high quality
food now (we have more access to things like fresh fruit, and wine), though
this is not necessarily true if you are poor.

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smokeyj
Are the prices adjusted for inflation?

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olalonde
> (in billions of 2009 dollars)

Yes.

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cickpass_broken
It may be of interest to some: As food costs have come down in US so have some
important nutrients in fruit & veggies.

Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You?
[http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1880145,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1880145,00.html#ixzz1rBmN0inp)

And,

Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999
<http://www.jacn.org/content/23/6/669.full>

Which concludes: "We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily
explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which
there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content."

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bmelton
I would love to see this data compared to other countries.

I find it interesting that despite everything to do with health care, we're
only spending approximately 4% more on medical care than we were in 1949.

That we are generally buying larger houses is no surprise, but that we're
spending a substantially larger portion of our incomes to do so is, while not
surprising, certainly interesting in the sense that this binds us to our
income streams more than generations past.

I don't know the data, so perhaps someone could enlighten me as to whether or
not this is because houses are just more expensive than they used to be, or
because we just like buying larger houses (possibly for status) than we used
to, or whether we just have more income available to spend on houses since
we're spending so much less on food and clothing?

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roc
The medical care number has to be distorted. I don't know _any_ American
families whose contributions toward their insurance premiums alone would
amount to only 7% of spending. Not counting co-pays or co-insurance or any out
of pocket costs.

To get down to 7% they must not be counting employer contributions, those who
get medical care from the VA, Medicare or Medicaid, nor people going uninsured
and then filing bankruptcy when they get hit with notable medical costs.

There is simply no way.

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pdx
My insurance (healthy young family of four, $1K deductible per person) costs
me 12.6% of my pretax earnings, not including what my employer kicks in. It
was over 14% before my last raise, and it would be even higher if my company
hadn't aggressively shopped around among several insurers. That's for me as an
engineer making almost 100K. What about the guy making $70K with a family of
four? It is a huge drain.

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kingnothing
On the flip side, I'm paying insurance premiums for only myself and spending
less than 1% of my pretax income. The medical, dental, and vision is all
excellent. Shop around. You can certainly do better than $1,000 a month (12%
of 100k / 12).

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roc
> _"You can certainly do better than $1,000 a month"_

For a family of four? Not that I've seen. Even after employer contributions
people in my orbit are usually looking at ~$1000 out-of-pocket (granted,
pretax) for family medical/dental/drug/vision.

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timwiseman
Perhaps someone could explain this to me, "But too many workers serving a need
leads in one direction for prices: Up."

I am no economist, but I would expect the opposite. Having too many people in
one field would result in a reduction in wages and prices until people started
leaving that field as a result and the supply/demand ratio stabilized. What am
I missing or misunderstanding?

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dkrich
I agree that statement was poorly worded, but I think what they meant is that
if a particular good is inefficiently produced, or rather, requires a large
investment of human capital, that good is going to be more expensive than if
the same good requires fewer workers. I believe that was a reference to the
cost of health care.

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cinquemb
I would love to see "What Americans Are Offered To Buy",the advertising
spending on it, what products have the most advertising, and then the author
presenting a question at the end if we really need those things people are
telling us that we should (and continue to) buy the most.

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jfoutz
Mens clothes really jumped out at me. I'd assumed since retail space for women
was 7x that dedicated to men, women's clothing would be around 7x that of
mens.

Something really complicated is going on making those two channels very
different.

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noblethrasher
Some hypotheses based on anecdotal observations:

Women spend more time shopping for men and children than men spend shopping
for women and children.

Women spend a lot more on shoes than men.

Women spend a lot more on accessories than men.

Women enjoy shopping more than men so retailers offer more opportunity to
browse.

~~~
jfoutz
Maybe. At the very least, shoes are a separate category on that chart. One
rolex makes up for a ton of less expensive accessories.

I think it's more like, the vast majority of clothes are socks, underwear,
jeans and t-shirts. Simple, everyday stuff that wears out. I'd bet the sales
of this stuff pretty much equals out. However, there's a layer of "nice"
clothes. mens stuff is more expensive, but lasts and is fashionable longer.
Suits vs dresses might be a good example.

I'd also guess men are spending more on clothes than they have historically.

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kerryiob
A few important things that aren't being discussed:

If your income level drops, it should be relatively easy to cut back on food
expenses. You can simply eat less or buy less expensive food. Not great
options, but possible. On the other hand, if you income level drops, it's can
be very difficult to reduce housing costs fast. Thus I would think that people
are more vulnerable to unexpected drops in income.

Same thing goes for medical costs. It can be very difficult to reduce those
without sacrificing health.

Another big issue is that in 1962 most households were single income. Most
mothers were at home. If the husband lost his job, there were 2 potential wage
earners that could theoretically renter the job market to regain the needed
income. Today most households are dual income, and require all of that income
to pay the bills. So if one personal loses their job, there isn't a backup
worker able to enter the workforce if needed. So again, more vulnerability to
reduced income.

~~~
usaar333
Great points.

> On the other hand, if you income level drops, it's can be very difficult to
> reduce housing costs fast. Thus I would think that people are more
> vulnerable to unexpected drops in income.

I was shocked to see how high housing was. 31.3% just for rent or mortgage?
You are screwed in a two person household if someone loses a job.

And 5.4% for utilities? I assume that includes mobile, but that feels
incredibly high.

~~~
Tloewald
What's the median household income post tax? Can't find a good figure but it's
around $50k pretax. Which is I guess 40k ish post tax, $3.5k or so per month.
So 5% of that is $175.

Phone, cable, water, trash, electricity?

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marrakech
Lenin said that there are in progressive order: lies, total lies, and finally
statistics.

Anybody here spending 3% of their income on health care? I mean in most cases
insurance premiums alone are much more than 3% of average income. Not to
mention things like cancer that cost about 500k on average to treat. Who takes
this data seriously?

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te_platt
It would be interesting to see how total income is allocated. That would
include income taxes, debt payments, and other things that aren't purchases.

Also, I think it's interesting that recreational spending has increased very
little. Are we already saturated with all the recreation we want?

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eli_gottlieb
Why would we spend more on recreation when we have less time for it?

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seancoughlin
Grocery spending versus restaurant/ deli spending stands out to me: 8.6% on
Groceries vs. 5.7% on some version of eating out.

In a better scenario, groceries, being cheaper and generally healthier than
food "eaten out" would make up a bigger percentage of total food spend.

That said, as a 20something single guy, I don't remember the last time I went
to a grocery store and i think i manage my money pretty well.

I'd like to see these food spend #s (and the rest of these #s) broken down for
income levels and other demographics

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waterside81
The implication of your comment is you eat out 3 (or more/less) times a day, 7
days a week? Out of curiosity, what kinds of foods are you buying? How much
would you say you spend a week on food?

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cobrausn
In my early 20s I was somewhat like the OP - I would eat out for pretty much
every meal. The trick to it was only eating twice a day, or once if you could
manage it. The end result was actually fairly inexpensive depending upon where
you were eating.

Of course, that was back when my body could handle this kind of abuse.

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JVIDEL
So a "niche" startup with a solid monetization plan would involve selling
cheap alcohol and cirrhosis pills?

(j/k)

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zitterbewegung
Why why why are they having a two dimentional represntation of a 1 dimentional
data point? If they wanted something like this to work you should use squares
instead of circles regardless.

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MaxGabriel
My only experience is reading Tufte, so I have a question for you. If you
based the circles' area on the data, rather than making the circles based off
the radius based off the data, you wouldn't be misconstruing the data, right?

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wisty
Engle's law - the consumption of food drops as income rising. It's sad that
Engle had such a similar name to Engles, because he had a lot of interesting
stuff to say.

