Consumption Expenditure Survey

[TheNiche]

The website below depicts figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2004-2005 Consumer Expenditures Survey for six major southern metropolitan areas as well as the South, generally. It makes for some interesting comparisons, especially between Houston, DFW, and Atlanta. Nobody cares about D.C. or Baltimore, though. Miami, I can take or leave.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce...y0405/south.txt

We're demographically very similar to Dallas, except that households in Houston are much larger than average, with more children (by far) than all other cities. Houston and Dallas each have fewer seniors than average, have a higher number of employed persons per household, and have more vehicles per household. Although Atlanta has a significantly higher rate of home ownership (72%), all other cities are at about the same level, between 67 and 69 percent.

Of the three comparable cities, Houston is by far the wealthiest city. Average before-tax household income is about $70k as compared with $62k in Dallas and $60k in Atlanta. As might be expected, we also have the highest rate of consumption expenditures per household. What is very interesting, however, is that the average Houston household spends 76.2% of its income on consumption, while Dallas households spend 82.0% of their income. Atlanta households, in contrast, spend only 66.7% of their income on consumption. I would've imagined that there would've been a negative correlation between household income and the propensity to consume, and that tax effects might've accounted for some of the differences between HOU and DFW, but Atlanta throws a wrench in that theory.

With respect to the following categories of consumption expenditure, cities are ranked first in the absolute number of dollars spent in that category, then by the percentage of all consumption expenditures devoted to that category:

Food at Home

Dallas ($3.6k), Houston ($3.1k), Atlanta ($2.7k)

Dallas (7.0%), Atlanta (6.7%), Houston (5.9%)

Food Away From Home

Dallas ($2.9k), Atlanta ($2.8k), Houston ($2.7k)

Atlanta (7.1%), Dallas (5.7%), Houston (5.2%)

Alcoholic Beverages

Dallas ($540), Houston ($430), Atlanta ($337)

Dallas (1.1%), Atlanta (0.8%), Houston (0.8%) <------interesting...

OK, sorry I've run out of time to crunch the numbers. Everything you need to know is on the sheet shown in the link. Not surprisingly, Houston has lower housing costs than Dallas, although we seem to spend somewhat more on rental housing and FAR less on owned housing. We spend a whole lot on transportation, though not much of that at all is on public transit as compared to Dallas. We spend about the same on healthcare, more on education, reading, and entertainment, and much more on cash contributions (i.e. donations), as well as much more on insurance and pensions.

I'm sure that a lot of this will stimulate some argument about transportation policy, but just to preempt it, let it be known that there is a very direct correlation between city size and transit use, as well as that different cities will have different utility and demand curves with respect to various types of vehicles (i.e. trucks, luxury vehicles, performance vehicles, etc.), and that not all transportation expenditures are unwelcome. Additionally, there will be some differences between costs of living and the effects of having different demographic profiles. In particular, Houston probably has higher transportation costs per household because it has more employees and children per household. Employees must get to work in two seperate locations and children must be taken to school. So there are a lot of confounding issues. Let's just write that debate off for another day (or thread).