Will Parents Finally Get a Break on Back-to-School Spending This Year?
The average family with school-age children will spend $630 on clothing and school supplies before their kids return to the classroom.
That’s down slightly from the $669 spent last year, but represents a 42 percent increase over the past decade, according to the National Retail Federation.
Despite the lower per-family spending, fewer consumers say the economy has influenced their spending plans, and a smaller percentage are looking for sales or buying generic products to save.
Among those surveyed, 93 percent said they’d buy clothing for their kids, laying out an average $218 on new threads and $117 on new shoes. Spending on school supplies will average $98.
Families said they planned to spend an average of $197 on electronics, down from $212 spent in that category last year.
Related: 10 Sure Ways to Save on Back-to-School Shopping
A quarter of those surveyed said that they’d start back-to-school shopping just a week or two before school started, while one in five start shopping two months before school begins.
Discount stores represented the most popular destinations for online shopping (62 percent), followed by department stores (56 percent), and clothing stores (54 percent).
Parents are letting their kids take the lead on some purchases, with 86 percent of shoppers saying that their kids will influence at least a quarter of purchases. Teens will spend $33 of their own money an average, and pre-teens will pay $18 out of pocket.
Total spending on back-to-school shopping will amount to $25 billion for K-12, with another $43 billion spent on back-to-college shopping.
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
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Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
