PRICES & SPENDING • May 2017 • Volume 6 / Number 5
Use with caution: interpreting Consumer Expenditure income group data
This Beyond the Numbers article examines assumptions users often make regarding how the CE measures household wealth, by providing examples of the nuances in the data and composition of five household groupings. The examples provide a clearer snapshot of economic well-being found in the income quintiles.
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Recent articles
How do United States consumer expenditures compare with the United Kingdom and Japan?
In 2014, U.S. consumers spent almost 19 percent of every dollar on transportation, which is 87 percent higher than what Japan spent. U.S. households also spent about 9 percent on out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures, which was 5 times higher than the U.K. Expenditure shares are the percentages of total expenditures allotted to each spending category. Japan’s share of food expenditures was the highest among the other two countries. The United States had increases in expenditures shares of transportation and healthcare.
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The cost of crisis: why stock fees rise when markets slip
Uncertainty about the direction of the financial markets affects the value of stocks and the costs to trade them. This Beyond the Numbers article examines the relationship between the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index (PPI) for dealer transactions-equity securities and two major stock market volatility indicators. An analysis of these three measures shows a positive correlation. This means that when the market volatility indexes increases, the PPI for dealer transactions-equity securities also tends to increase.
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Below trend: the U.S. productivity slowdown since the Great Recession
In the span of just six quarters between 2007 and 2009, nonfarm business output declined by $753 billion and 8.1 million jobs were lost. This period, known as the Great Recession, was the worst American recession since the Great Depression.
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