Spending by Oahu households (2014, renters, insurance)

[pj737]

Here are some snippets from today's Star Advertiser article regarding where people on Oahu spend their money.

Here is a link to the DBEDT Oahu survey being discussed below -

http://files.hawaii.gov/dbedt/econom...rvey_Final.pdf




The state published a report Monday shedding new light on how Oahu household spending gets distributed.

The report — from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism — produced data on local consumer spending that the federal government quit compiling about a decade ago.

“The main contribution of this study is to fill in the gap we’ve been experiencing for the last 10 years,” said the state’s chief economist, Eugene Tian.

Another contribution is knowing how much Oahu households spent on average buying things online: $720, or 1.2 percent of disposable income.

The report presents annual average spending based on surveys in 2013 and 2014.

Housing, food and transportation were the biggest spending categories in the report, which tabulated average expenditures for 14 categories and broke down differences in spending by race, household size, income level, education level and other household distinctions.

Oahu households earned $82,860 and spent about 75 percent of that, or $62,488, on average annually over the two years. The balance primarily went to taxes and savings.

DBEDT contrasted its report with comparable federal data last published in 2004-05, and said Oahu residents spent a lot more on housing, the same on food and a little less on transportation in 2013-14 than they did nearly a decade earlier.

The biggest annual expense in the recent period was housing at $26,980. That represented 43.2 percent of total expenditures, and breaks down to $2,249 a month. Nearly a decade earlier the average household spent considerably less of its disposable income — 31.7 percent — on housing, which includes rent, mortgage payments, investment property and vacation lodging.

Tian said the jump reflected housing prices that rose faster than personal income.

The share of spending on food remained unchanged over the nine-year period at 14.7 percent, showing that personal income and food prices rose in step.

Spending on transportation, which includes out-of-pocket costs for vehicle purchases, fuel, maintenance and public transportation, declined by 4.2 percentage points to 13.9 percent from 18.1 percent in the comparable period. Tian said the drop was largely due to cheaper financing for vehicle purchases, as gas prices generally dropped after 2013 and 2014.

Together, the three big basic needs of housing, food and transportation consumed 71.8 percent of disposable household income.

Among 11 other categories that include health care, entertainment, education, retirement savings, tobacco and alcohol, the share of spending moved more than 1 percentage point for only five categories — going up by 1.1 percentage points for health care and 1.6 percentage points for education while going down 2 percentage points for apparel/services, 3.2 percentage points for entertainment and 4.1 percentage points for insurance/retirement savings.

Differences by household type showed that military households spent significantly more on housing — $38,391, which equated to $3,199 a month and 54.8 percent of total spending — compared with nonmilitary households, which on average spent $26,062, equating to $2,035 a month and 41.8 percent of spending.

DBEDT’s report also showed that homeowners with mortgages spent a slightly smaller percentage of their income on housing compared with renters — 46 percent versus 47.3 percent. In terms of actual dollars, homeowners with mortgages spent more on housing compared with renters — $37,651 versus $24,424.