December 17, 1998 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
High income households allocate
smaller expenditure shares to necessities
In 1994-95, households with annual incomes of more than
$90,000 allocated smaller shares of their money to necessities, such as food at home,
shelter and utilities, transportation, and health care. Instead, higher-income households
spent larger shares on such items as food away from home, personal insurance and pensions,
cash contributions, and entertainment.
![Selected shares of consumer expenditures by income, 1994-95](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120921211747im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/1998/Dec/wk3/art04.gif)
[Chart data—TXT]
Higher-income households spent 15.5 percent of their incomes on
transportation expenditures, compared with almost 19 percent for other households.
Expenditures on public transportation—mostly airline fares- were a larger share of
higher-income budgets, while expenditures on vehicle purchases and costs related to
vehicle ownership took a larger chunk in other households.
Food expenditures accounted for about 11 percent of spending for high-income
households, compared with more than 14 percent for other households. This difference
occurred despite the fact that higher-income households spent a larger share on food away
from home.
Higher-income households allocated 3.4 percent of expenditures on health care, some 2.2
percentage points less than the health care share for lower-income households.
Data on spending by income are produced by the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey. For additional information, see
Summary 98-10, "Issues in Labor Statistics:
Spending Patterns of High-income Households".
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »