Spending Habits by Generation

Thank you for the chart. This chart will be very helpful.

Knowing that Millennials can remain on their parents employer sponsored health plan until age 26, I would be interested to know what is spent on health care

Of course Millennials can be reported as the largest generation. All other generational categories are 20-25 year periods of time. You've got 30+ years and counting in the millennial category. That may the conventional period to include when defining millennials. It is not, however, accurate for comparison to other generations when addressing pure numbers of people contained in each category.

I'd also like to see what portion of spending across generations is going towards paying off indebtedness other than housing, especially student loans.

I love stats like this! There is so much talk in workplace about millennials and baby boomers and Gen X. I happen to be a GenX and that's a very close snapshot of our spending, perhaps because we still have a mortgage in it's cycle, young children, etc.

We need a new CPI formula, such as CPI-E, in order to properly track the spending patterns of seniors/retirees, relative to cost-of-living-adjustments(COLA's)...you know, for the retirement benefits that impact the ones that are actually on retirement budgets. Why are we still tracking the spending of younger workers, as in the current CPI-W formula...?

Two thoughts:

-Why is the millennial generation covering a 35 year span when other generations are typically around 15 years? That would explain why they are the largest (I am guessing at some point the current span of years to identify millennials will be broken into two).

-Since a large portion of millennials are not yet financially independent from their families (regardless if they are work age and even if they are working) I believe it may appear they spend the same on housing, spend more eating out, etc. but when they shoulder a high mortgage (ballooning housing costs), have a family, etc. and are not living with their parents/family that pattern will change.

Wondering about millennial annual expenditureon on student loan debt, and if/how this would correlate to other spending habits, and also any correlations to what professions millennial's are/are not choosing.

Last frame of the video refers to "learn more at bls.gov/generations." This website does not exist.

This chart appears to represent household consumption, and since taxes are not included, I assume it's after tax consumption. I am a little unclear how expenditures appear to average around $70k when mean household income is around $60K, and I assume that is a pre-tax figure. I would be interested to see how these figures can be reconciled, assuming the delta doesn't represent borrowed money.

Actually, according to BLS, "Median annual household income in 2016 has ... [gone] from $57,985 in January 2016 to $57,616 in September 2016." This is considerably below the consumption levels shown in this note, even ignoring the issue of taxes.

So glad you published this article. Very helpful.

The Millennials spend less on housing than most other groups because so many are still living with their parents.

Interesting information.....for sighted individuals. Please rethink using a video with nothing but printed words and no audible text and a graph with no descriptive information. This was not accessible for those with screen readers.