The real political capital: According to a new study released today by American Demographics, Americans are the world’s biggest spenders. Indeed, collectively, what we spend in a week is equivalent to Finland’s gross national product. It’s kind of hard to say what’s good news and what’s bad news in the report, but here are some excerpted highlights for your consideration:
- The average American household’s economic outlays for all goods
and services reached $1,500 a week in 2005. - Real—after inflation—consumer spending in the U.S. rose 23% in the past 10 years, while the number of households was up only 14%.
- The Census Bureau recently reported that 37 million people in the U.S. lived in poverty in 2004. That’s 5.4 million more than in 2000—a 17% increase in a period when the number of people who weren’t living in poverty edged up 2.5%.
- A record 45.8 million people in the U.S. had no health insurance in 2004, 6 million more than in 2000. That’s a 15% increase compared with a tiny 2% increase for people with health insurance.
- The highest-income 20% of U.S. households has an average annual income of $151,600. But the majority—60%—of U.S. households lives on a little more than one-fourth of all consumer income, an average of about $27,000 each.
- Baby boomers have created more wealth than any preceding generation in part because of their cohort size (78 million Americans born 1946-64; 26% of the population), but in large part because so many of them went to college.
- The U.S. population is predicted to hit 300 million on Sept. 15, 2006.
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