June 19, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Single parents allot higher share of spending to necessities in 1998

Food, apparel, and housing expenditures amounted to 55 percent of the median budget for both married couple families with two children and those without children, based on 1998 data—however, for single parents with one or two children, food, apparel, and housing expenditures totaled 66 percent of the median budget.

[Chart data—TXT]

In each of the other categories shown in the chart, the share in the median budget of single parents with one or two children was lower than for the married couple families shown in the chart.

These data are a product of the Consumer Expenditure Survey program. For additional information, see "A century of family budgets in the United States," by David S. Johnson, John M. Rogers, and Lucilla Tan, Monthly Labor Review, May 2001.