Those who watch macro trends in consumer spending to help plan future payments needs will want to take a look at data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. These statistics tell the story that Americans are spending greater and greater amounts of their income on healthcare:
People in the U.S. are spending over 20.6% of their income on health care, according to data published by the U.S. Department of Commerce on March 2, 2015. This is up from 15% of personal income in 1990.
This could have an impact on the payment methods that many consumers use to pay for healthcare, which includes heavy reliance on traditional bill pay and checks. Also of note in this data is that healthcare payments are being made at the expense of household items, including cards, housing, clothing groceries and eating outside the home:
Spending on these home budget line items remained relatively flat over the 25 year period 1990-2015, with education spending ticking up from 0.9% of income to 1.6%.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.
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