Books v. Cigarettes: Why Read When You Can Smoke?

Visual Economics has an interesting, though slightly disturbing, pie chart that shows how the average American consumer spends his or her money.  If there's a punchline there, it's that the average person spends 2.75 times more money on tobacco than books.  I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.  7-11 never seems to keep copies of Blink on a rack above the counter.  American's aren't bored though - don't worry.  We spend almost 23 times more of our dollars on entertainment than books...and that entertainment budget doesn't even include the booze!  Here is the breakdown of the leading macro-components of our annual budgets.  (The actual chart provides more detail.)

34.1%       Shelter
17.6%       Transportation
12.4%       Food
10.8%       Insurance and Pensions
5.7%         Health Care
5.4%         Entertainment
3.8%         Apparel and Services
3.7%        Cash contributions
1.9%         Education
1.6%         Miscellaneous
1.2%         Personal Care
0.9%        Alcoholic Beverages
0.7%        Tobacco
0.2%        Reading

Comments

[Alfred]

I'm surprised the gap between tobacco and reading isn't greater, actually. (And that "reading" category likely includes newspapers and magazines, too--so we don't even spend an average of $118/year per person on books. Hi People Magazine!)