It is frustrating to see valuable information hidden in well-meaning, but uninformative charts. FlowingData.com referenced just such an article, “How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck“.
The chart in the original article at Visual Economics is indeed attractive. Unfortunately, it is also very hard to understand. Key data relationships that should jump off of the chart are obscured by the donut chart and excessive chart text or “chart junk”.
Here are several accessible and simple ways to present this fascinating data. All of these examples were created with Tableau.
A few notes on the original data.
- I have reorganized it somewhat from the original version for clarity.
- Taxes should be considered one of the ways your income is spent! The pension data included one of these taxes, Social Security. The government is under no official obligation to pay out on Social Security, so it is a tax rather than a true pension. Of course , any Congress that significantly cut Social Security would likely be voted out, so it is almost a sure thing but not guaranteed!
- One other oddity. In the US, we are spending around 15% of GDP on medical care. This data shows 4.5%, I am unsure why there is such a large discrepancy. I have not attempted to correct this here.
- Finally, back to Social Security. Your employer pays an equivalent amount as the “employer share”. If this was included, taxes would be ~34% of income. This would place taxes significantly ahead of housing as our largest expenditure.
Tags: Consumer · Graphs · Insights · Principles4 Comments
Posted on July 14th, 2009 by
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I have to agree. Donuts are very “clunky” and just a bastardization of the generally hard to interpret pie chart. A lot of chart junk is exactly right.
Too much design and not enough information in the original version… I’d like to know how quickl you created this in Tableau? I think I need to try it after wrestling with Exel 2007 lately.
Hello,
Looks great. Thanks for posting this. As for note #3 I hope to provide just a little clarification regarding Consumer Expenditure (CE) Data on Healthcare.
CE measures only DIRECT out of pocket expenses reported by consumers. Therefore, many healthcare expenditures which are covered by the 15% of GDP figure are not included in CE data. Notably: Medicare, Medicaid, Private insurance through your employer, and a host of others.
I hope that wasn’t confusing. Thank you for posting this.
William
Hi William,
Excellent piece of clarifying data. This makes sense now. It is fascinating, since I would estimate that the direct employer expense for health insurance and social insurance programs are around 18-20% of the employees salary/wages.
I am fascinated by this type of data. For example, veterinarians are trained in a manner very similar to MD’s. In fact, it is even harder to gain admission to Vet School, based on grades and test scores (a much lower supply of Vet Schools!)
Yet, my major abdominal surgery on my bulldog was $800 plus $400 for 3 days of hospitalization, in 2001. True, the facilities for my bulldog weren’t as nice, but it is the same medications and similar equipment as a human surgery and recovery.
I calculated (with a friend’s help at a hospital) what this same procedure would cost at my local hospital- around $28,000! Stunning! My vet spends more time with us than any doctor, since she loved seeing the little guy. I think some of the biggest reasons our medical insurance system is broken:
1) It isn’t really insurance against large expenses, but rather a payment system for every little expense. As a result, the bureaucracy is large with doctors spending over 1/3 of their time dealing with insurance!
2) The incentives for long-term healthy choices are very low. Doctors are paid for treating illness, not maintaining health! Friends in Germany and France have vastly superior preventive care, including spas for stress and doctors who can actually see them for more than 3 minutes! They even make house calls in the middle of night to avoid hospitalization, I have personally seen this. Yet, they spend 1/3 less on health care and live slightly longer than the average American.
Sorry about the lengthy health-care discussion, I am very passionate about this since I have seen so many problems with our system first-hand.
Best,
Stephen
I prefer this method over the donut chart. It makes it easy to see where the bulk of the cash is going.
Also, is the tax portion strickly payroll and income taxes? There are additional taxes on other consumer spending like utilities, food and clothing, and transportation.