American Consumers Newsletter
by Cheryl Russell, Editorial Director, New Strategist Press
January 2016
Median Housing Value Grows, Finally
IN THIS ISSUE:
2. Data you need: Spending and Attitudes:
HOUSEHOLD SPENDING, 20th edition
BEST CUSTOMERS, 11th edition
WHO’S BUYING REPORTS, 14-volume series
To see Cheryl Russell’s Demo Memo blog, click here.
1. Hot Trends
The median value of owned homes in the United States increased in 2014 for the first time since the Great Recession. The nation’s homeowners estimated their home’s value to be a median of $181,200 in 2014, according to the American Community Survey. This is 2.5 percent more than the post-Great Recession low of $176,721 in 2013, after adjusting for inflation, but 18 percent below the 2007 median of $221,845.
- The labor force participation rate of men aged 62 to 64 will climb to 60 percent by 2024, up from just 45 percent in 1994. Work is now the norm for men in the age group. For their fathers who retired in the 1990s, retirement was the norm.
- The labor force participation rate of women aged 62 to 64 will reach 47 percent by 2024, up from 33 percent a generation ago in 1994.
- The labor force participation rate of men aged 65 to 69 will climb to 40 percent by 2024, up from 27 percent in 1994.
- The labor force participation rate of women aged 65 to 69 will climb to 33 percent by 2024, up from 18 percent a generation ago.
Among families with employed mothers who pay for child care, the average weekly cost has grown from $84 in 1985 to $143 in 2011, after adjusting for inflation–a 70 percent increase, according to a Census Bureau report. For families with preschoolers, the average weekly cost of child care in 2011 was an even higher $179.
The steep and rising cost of child care explains why so many families with preschoolers depend on grandparents. Fully 21 percent of families with preschoolers and a working mother relied on a grandparent as the primary child care provider in 2011, up from 16 percent in 1985.
BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW
2. MEET YOUR CUSTOMERS
Who buys? What do they buy? How much do they spend? Get the dollar-for-dollar answers you need for business success in today’s competitive economy from these one-stop resources. You can’t get these data online!
You can see the book’s introduction, table of contents, index, and sample pages at NewStrategist.com, where you can also download this unique reference tool as a PDF linked to Excel spreadsheets of all data tables
Hardcover: $144.00 (978-1-9935114-80-2) 612 pages
Paper: $109.95 (978-1-933588-22-3)
PDF with Excel (single user): $109.95 (978-1-933588-24-7)
Best Customers: Demographics of Consumer Demand, 11th edition
Find out how the American marketplace has been transformed by the Great Recession in this edition of Best Customers: Demographics of Consumer Demand, with all-important 2013 spending data. In Best Customers you can see at a glance who spends the most and who controls the largest market share–often surprisingly different–on over 300 products and services. Each product table is accompanied by text that identifies the best customers, analyzes spending patterns, describes spending trends before (2000-06) and after (2006-13) the Great Recession, and predicts future trends based on changing demographics.
You can see the book’s introduction, table of contents, index, and sample pages at NewStrategist.com, where you can also download this unique reference tool as a PDF linked to Excel spreadsheets of all data tables.
Hardcover: $138.00 (978-1-933588-07-0) 808 pages
Paper: $103.95 (978-1-933588-17-9)
PDF with Excel (single user): $103.95 (978-1-933588-21-6)
Who’s Buying Series
Get the demographics you need to target your markets with the 14-volume Who’s Buying Series, which can be purchased individually or as a set. Each volume gives you the facts about consumer spending by age, income, household type, race and Hispanic origin, region of residence, and education. To round out the spending picture, you also get who-are-the-best-customer analyses of the data. These editions reveal product-by-product spending trends before (2000-06) and after (2006-13) the Great Recession. The Who’s Buying Series includes Alcoholic & Non-Alcoholic Beverages; Apparel; Entertainment; Groceries; Health Care; Household Furnishings, Services, and Supplies; Information and Consumer Electronics; Pets; Restaurants; Transportation; Travel; and Who’s Buying: Executive Summary, Who’s Buying by Age, and Who’s Buying by Race and Hispanic Origin.
You can see the introduction, table of contents, index, and sample pages of each volume in the Who’s Buying Series at NewStrategist.com, where you can also download these unique reference tools as PDFs linked to Excel spreadsheets of all data tables. Individual reports: $68.95; 14-volume series: $850.00.
The 8th edition of American Attitudes: Who Thinks What about the Issues That Shape Our Lives coaxes the results of the latest (2014) General Social Survey out of the shadows of academia and makes them readily available for researchers who want to explore Americans’ changing attitudes. In its hundreds of tables, American Attitudes taps into the General Social Survey gold mine, revealing what the public thinks about topics ranging from gay marriage to the American Dream, how Americans feel about their financial status, their hopes for their children, how often they socialize and with whom, their religious beliefs, patriotic feelings, political leanings, and standard of living. It shows those answers by sex, age, race, Hispanic origin, education, and region. American Attitudes reveals 2014 attitudes by demographic characteristic, and for every 2014 question for which historical data are available, it shows the history of response all the way back to the first appearance of the question on the General Social Survey.
You can see the book’s introduction, table of contents, index, and sample pages on NewStrategist.com, where you can also download this unique reference tool as a PDF linked to Excel spreadsheets of all data tables.
Hardcover: $138.00 (978-1-933588-20-9) 604 pages
PDF with Excel (single-user): $103.95 (978-1-885070-66-1)
For your convenience, all of New Strategist’s titles are available as searchable single- and multiple-user PDFs linked to spreadsheets of each data table so you can do your own analyses and create PowerPoint presentations.
Percentage of Americans aged 18 or older who think the U.S. will fight in another world war within 10 years…
2014: 59%
2010: 53%
2000: 38%
1990: 29%