The Consumer Expenditure Surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics play a major role in how inflation is measured in the United States. Data from these surveys is used to set the weights of different categories of these expenditures within the index, which in turn, affects how the BLS calculates the inflation American consumers experiencing through the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
But how are those weights changing over time? We recently featured charts showing the data for shares that the major categories of consumer expenditure have with respect to the average total expenditures of American household consumer units from 1984 through 2024, but those charts have a weakness. They present too many data series together, which makes it tough to track how individual categories are changing, especially when their data is close in value to that of other categories and the data series either cross-over each other or overlap.
We're experimenting with a different way to visually present that data. The following chart showing how the share of the major categories of consumer expenditures with respect to total average expendtures uses a clustered column format to group ten years worth of data for each major category. This format makes it easier to see how recent trends for each major category are developing, while also making it easy to compare how each category compares with others, which indicates how much weight it has in the calculation of the Consumer Price Index.
We've also organized the major categories of consumer expenditures in order from highest to lowest as you read the chart from left to right. For most of these data series, 2020 represents something of an anomaly because of that year's coronavirus pandemic. But when you look closer at these categories, especially the four largest ones, you'll find that each has claimed a rising share of total expenditures in the years since 2020. These are the categories in which inflating prices contributed to their rising share of consumer expenditures.
At the same time, other expenditures show falling trends over these years. What you're seeing are Americans reducing this other spending in response to the rising cost of the "Big 4" consumer expenditure categories.
For policymakers, this chart indicates that focusing on reducing costs in those "Big 4" categories to make them more affordable will do the most to provide tangible benefits for American consumers.
Speaking of which, health care, in the middle of the chart, is an interesting and deceptive anomaly. It shows health care expenditures as a share of average total expenditures, which are dominated by health insurance, rising through 2020, then falling in the years since. That's not because health insurance has become less costly since 2020, it's because the U.S. government increased health insurance subsidies so much it offset the big increases in the cost of health insurance that has been taking place. Since these subsidies are not truly sustainable, it would be greatly beneficial for policymakers to focus instead on directly reducing the cost of health insurance itself.
References
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Expenditure Survey. Multiyear Tables. [PDF Documents: 1984-1991, 1992-1999, 2000-2005, 2006-2012, 2013-2020. Excel spreadsheet: 2021-2024]. Reference URL: https://www.bls.gov/cex/home.htm. 19 December 2025.
Labels: data visualization
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