July 08, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Most poor consumers are single individuals
How do poor consumers differ from average
consumers? One way is that the distribution of family types is quite
different across the two groups.
[Chart data—TXT]
Among poor consumer households, 61.8 percent contained only a single
individual in 1999. In comparison, among other households in the
expenditure distribution, only 20.4 percent consist of a single
individual.
Also notable is that husband-and-wife type families comprise just over
a tenth of households in the poor consumer group, but over half of
households in the rest of the expenditure distribution. Single-parent
families account for 13.5 percent of the poor consumer households and 7.4
percent of the others.
For this analysis, "poor consumers" consist of households in
the lowest decile of the expenditure distribution. "Average
consumers" are represented by the averages for the remainder of the
expenditure distribution. Full-time college students and homeowners who no
longer have mortgage payments are excluded from this study.
These data are a product of the Consumer
Expenditure Survey program.
"Household" is used here as a synonym for the technical term
"consumer unit." Consumer units are 1) members of a household
related by blood, marriage, adoption, or other legal arrangement; 2) a
person living alone, or sharing a household with others, but who is
responsible for at least 2 of 3 major types of expenses: food, housing,
and other expenses; or 3) two or more persons living together who pool
their income to make joint expenditure decisions. For additional
information, see "Characteristics and spending patterns of consumer
units in the lowest 10 percent of the expenditure distribution," (PDF,
23K), Issues
in Labor Statistics, Summary 01-02.
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 »