{"id":8853,"date":"2017-06-06T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/?p=8853"},"modified":"2017-06-06T14:16:32","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T14:16:32","slug":"disproving-stereotypes-about-spending-in-black-households","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2017\/06\/06\/disproving-stereotypes-about-spending-in-black-households\/","title":{"rendered":"Disproving Stereotypes about Spending in Black Households"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Rapha\u00ebl Charron-Ch\u00e9nier, Joshua J. Fink, and Lisa A. Keister, <\/span>“ Race and Consumption: Black and White Disparities in Household Spending,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2017<\/span><\/div>\n
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Photo by I for Detail., Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

African Americans have long endured criticism about their spending habits. Conservative campaigns in the 1980s and 90s used stereotypical images of \u201cgold diggers\u201d and \u201cwelfare queens\u201d to convince white, middle-class Americans that low-income minorities not only drained government resources, but also spent those resources on frivolous items. Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz played to these\u00a0sentiments recently when he said,\u00a0\u201cAmericans have choices, and they\u2019ve gotta make a choice. And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare.\u201d New research by <\/span>Rapha\u00ebl<\/span> Charron-Ch\u00e9nier<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Joshua Fink<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Lisa Keister<\/span><\/a> goes beyond such individual-level explanations to investigate the structural factors that contribute\u00a0to racial disparities in consumption. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div> The authors use data from a nationally representative sample of over 9,500 households from the 2013 and 2014 Consumer Expenditure Surveys. These surveys measure total household purchases, including spending on food, entertainment, health care, housing, transportation and utilities. The authors then examined differences between black households and white households across low, middle, and high socioeconomic statuses.\u00a0
\nLow-income blacks are less likely than whites to spend money on goods that require large amounts of money up front.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Charron-Ch\u00e9nier and colleagues show that the average total spending for black households was significantly less than for white households, with black households spending $8,387 and white households spending $13,713. \u00a0More specifically, blacks spent less on housing, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment.\u00a0Low-income blacks in particular also spent less money on goods that required significant amounts of money up front than did low-income whites, though this difference diminished with income increases. Black households, however, did spend more than white households on goods that required long-term contracts, such as utilities, due to the threat of late fines and fees. So despite common criticisms about black consumer spending habits, this research shows that blacks actually spend far less than whites on “frivolous” items like new iPhones and they spend more on the long-term costs of maintaining a household.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rapha\u00ebl Charron-Ch\u00e9nier, Joshua J. Fink, and Lisa A. Keister, “ Race and Consumption: Black and White Disparities in Household Spending,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2017 African Americans have long endured criticism about their spending habits. Conservative campaigns in the 1980s and 90s used stereotypical images of \u201cgold diggers\u201d and \u201cwelfare queens\u201d to convince white, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[2381,88872,88873,37332,37333,396],"class_list":["post-8853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inequality","category-race","tag-black","tag-consumer-reports","tag-household-spending","tag-inequality","tag-race","tag-white"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8853"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8861,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853\/revisions\/8861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}