Consumer Budgeting Around the World

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released a fascinating report on how American consumers spend their money, and how that compares to spending behavior of their counterparts in other rich countries.
The numbers refer to 2009, when the United States recession hit its lowest point, so of course spending habits may have changed since then. The comparisons are still striking, though. For example, Americans spend a relatively small share of their spending on clothing as well as recreation and entertainment, at least compared to their counterparts in these other countries.

Not surprisingly, Americans devote a higher share of their budgets to out-of-pocket health care costs — 6.9 percent, versus about 4 percent in Canada and Britain and 1.4 percent in Japan.

These other countries, like all rich countries aside from the United States, also have some form of government-subsidized universal health care, which helps brings down consumers’ out-of-pocket costs. You might assume, then, that citizens of these other countries actually pay about as much as Americans do for health care once you take into account taxes and government spending.

You’d be wrong, though.

If you look at rich countries’ total health care spending per capita, the United States still comes out spending significantly more than its peers: