July 13, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Retirees spending more on health insurance
Retired households
spent more of their budgets on health insurance in 1997 than in 1987.
![Expenditure distribution for retired consumer units, 1987 and 1997 (percent)](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120921201418im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2000/Jul/wk2/art04.gif) [Chart data—TXT]
In 1997, the share of retired households’ expenditures devoted to
health insurance was 7.4 percent, up from 5.2 percent in 1987. The share
spent on all other health care expenses fell to 5.9 percent in 1997, from
6.6 percent in 1987.
Of the categories shown in the chart, health insurance increased the
most as a share of expenditures (measuring change in percentage points).
The health insurance share rose 2.2 percentage points, compared with 1.4
percentage points for entertainment and 0.4 percentage point for
transportation. The remaining categories had decreases in their shares
from 1987 to 1997.
These data are produced by the BLS Consumer
Expenditure Surveys program. More
information can be found in Issues in Labor Statistics: Consumer
Spending During Retirement. (Summary 00-11, May 2000). A consumer unit
is classified as retired if the reference person is 65 years of age or
older and retired, and there are no earners in the household.
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 »
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