October 14, 2010 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Spending on mortgage interest payments and charges decreases from 2007 to 2009
Spending on mortgage interest payments and charges, a subcomponent of housing expenditures (the largest component of consumers’ budgets in 2009), fell from $3,890 in 2007 to $3,594 in 2009—evidence of the higher than normal default rate on mortgages, falling house prices, lower rates of homeownership, and declining mortgage interest rates over the period.
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Among other subcomponents of housing expenditures, spending on rented dwellings increased from $2,602 in 2007 to $2,860 in 2009. Consumer units within the highest income quintile group increased expenditures for rented dwellings from $1,293 in 2007 to $1,911 in 2009.
As the price of gasoline rose and fell sharply from 2007 to 2009, expenditures on gasoline and motor oil fluctuated—increasing from $2,384 in 2007 to $2,715 in 2008 and then decreasing to $1,986 in 2009.
The level of spending on healthcare continued to rise, from $2,853 in 2007 to $3,126 in 2009, largely due to the spending increase in the health insurance subcomponent.
These data come from the Consumer Expenditure Survey. See "Consumer Expenditures — 2009" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-10-1390, to learn more. Consumer units, which are similar to households, include families, single persons living alone or sharing a household with others but who are financially independent, or two or more persons living together who share expenses.
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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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